Mentordora Tonks
by jlluh
Summary: Seeing as he's her closest living relative who isn't her mother, a Malfoy, or a prisoner of Azkaban, seventh-year student Nymphadora Tonks takes first-year student Harry Potter under her wing.
1. Chapter 1: Mentordora

Mentordora Tonks

At the end of the first week of the new school year, Harry Potter, first-year student, was alone in the library going through family trees. Ron had made an offhand comment about how all purebloods were related somehow or another, and off to the library he had gone.

He found the Potters, and they were many, but every single name but his was struck out by the thin black line of death.

When he touched a name, a paragraph of detail showed next to it saying how they'd lived and how they'd died. Most of the modern Potters had died in the war against Voldemort. The others, in more conventional ways. Sighing, he examined his more distant relations and was warmed to see that he was, through the Prewetts, very distantly related to Ron.

He looked for closer relations, and found that the closest ones still living were from the Black family. James Potter, son of Dorea Potter, nee Black. Go up to Cygnus Black, her father, down to Pollus Black, his son, and Pollus had three children who were still alive.

Narcissa Black. Harry nearly shut his book when he saw who her son was.

Narcissa Black had married Lucius Malfoy, spawning Draco Malfoy, a boy who had, in a very short time, become someone he disliked even more than Dudley.

But Narcissa Black was one of three sisters. Surely it would get better. The second, was Bellatrix Lestrange, formerly Bellatrix Black. The little picture looked very pretty. He read eagerly and winced when he saw that she had been one of Voldemort's chief servants and was serving a life sentence in Azkaban, whatever that was.

Clearly his surviving wizarding family was _horrible,_ worse than the Dursleys.

Feeling morbid, he checked the third sister.

Andromeda Black had married Ted Tonks, becoming Andromeda Tonks. Ted Tonks was a muggle-born, and Andromeda Black had been thrown out of the Black family over it, which, based on her sisters, was a good sign.

And Andromeda Tonks had a daughter, Nymphadora Tonks. Weird name, but a bit of math on a corner of his parchment showed that she was about 6 years and 10 months older than him, and should be a seventh-year. She was probably at Hogwarts.

His great-grandfather, Cygnus Black, was her great-great-grandfather. He wasn't sure what sort of cousin that made her. A hasty look at how cousins worked suggested she was his third-cousin once removed. Something like that. And yet, she was, ignoring Malfoy, his closest living wizarding relation.

He thought about looking for Nymphadora Tonks, but for all he knew, she was a big, female Draco Malfoy. And even if she wasn't, they were very distantly related. She'd think he was weird if he came up to her. He resolved not to.

#

#

The next day, Saturday, Harry got lost, which was no surprise. He'd gotten lost every day. But this time, he'd been coming back from the loo, and he'd gotten lost without Ron.

He aimed for the Great Hall. It was big, after all, and from there, he knew the way to the Gryffindor dorms.

He was walking through a crowd of older students, wondering if he should ask any for directions and deciding not to, when he heard a word.

"Tonks!"

He turned. An Indian boy said, "Tonks, you up for a first-weekend party tonight? I've got firewhiskey."

The girl he was talking to was tall and pink-haired, and maybe more of a woman than a girl. She was hardly paying attention to the Indian boy. She was looking at Harry.

The Indian boy turned to see where she was looking and said, "Oh."

Without input from the rest of him, Harry's feet moved her toward him, and his mouth, with the same defiant lack of permission, began to speak.

"Hello. Are you Nymphadora Tonks?"

#

#

Tonks was sitting on a stoop outside bachannal hall, a book in hand, catching up with friends, when Harry Potter passed through.

There was no way he remembered her, and he probably had half the student body trying to grab a piece of him, so she'd promised herself she'd ignore him, but still, she couldn't help but stare.

Then he stared at her, moved toward her, and said, "Hello. Are you Nymphadora Tonks?"

Her reply was automatic. "Just Tonks. My first name is stupid."

"Yeah," said Harry. "Er, I just noticed, I was looking at my family tree, we're related, a little. I was wondering if you..." He trailed off, obviously made nervous by the crowd of older students staring at him. "No, I'm sorry, sorry for bothering you, I'll go." He turned away, the first step of hurrying away.

Without any input from the rest of her, Tonks' mouth spoke. "I held you when you were a baby."

Harry stopped.

"Your mum and dad were nervous about it. Not just because I was only seven, but because I'm clumsy. They let me do it anyway, because I kept asking, but they both had their wands out and your mum cast a Cushioning Charm on you first."

Harry turned.

You were very small, with fat round cheeks and your eyes were already that very bright green. The same as your mum's." Her hair changed from pink to that same vibrant green, to illustrate the point. "Your mum and dad told me to support your head, and I did. But before long they took you back."

Harry was getting misty-eyed and blinking.

"I have pictures in my trunk." She hadn't decided to ignore him until after she'd packed. "Would you like to see them?"

Harry nodded mutely.

#  
#

Harry sat in the Hufflepuff girls' seventh-year dormitory. A prefect had told Tonks she couldn't bring a Gryffindor in, and she'd told him to screw off. The stairs had turned into a slide when he'd followed her up, and she'd told the stairs to screw off, and that had worked too. Tonks had locked the door with a charm so they wouldn't be disturbed, and now they sat in chairs before her bed, pictures scattered across that bed.

Tonks said, "I got you a storybook for your first birthday. You were too young, but it's what I picked out. I couldn't give it to you in person, because that was just after your family went into hiding, but it was sent to you. Later, they sent a picture of Lily reading it to you. I got it just before the Night."

She pointed to a picture. A red-haired woman with green-eyes. Beautiful, and younger than he'd imagined. A green-eyed baby with a mop of black hair sat on her lap, and she held a storybook.

Like all wizarding pictures, it moved, and it kept smiling at him. Harry swallowed.

"You see, after my mum was expelled from the Black family, the Potters took her and my dad in, inviting them to Christmas and all the rest. That was before I was born, so growing up, I called your dad 'Uncle James,' and I called your grandma and grandad my grandma and grandad, even though they weren't. This was your first Christmas." She pointed to another picture.

A Christmas tree. The woman he now recognized as his mother. The man he now recognized as his father had an arm around her. The smiling, gray-haired people he now recognized as his Charlus and Dorea, his grandpa and grandma. Dorea had been a Black, his connection to Tonks. Tonks' great-grandfather's sister.

"Grandpa and Grandma died just after," said Tonks.

"How?"

"Death Eaters. They took several down with them. It went like that for all the Potters, pretty much. There were quite a few, before, and not a one of them believed in keeping their heads down."

A shrill of anger ran through Harry. If it wasn't for Voldemort, he'd have all those people.

"And who's this?" he said, pointing to a black-haired man about his father's age.

"Sirius Black. He was kicked out of the Black family too. Uncle Sirius, I called him. We all thought he was a good person, but he wasn't. I'll tell you the story when you're older." She nearly threw the picture down. "I keep thinking of banishing him from all the pictures he's in, but I haven't. Here's another picture."

His father and grandpa were sitting in front of the Christmas tree, and they seemed to be arguing, but not the shouting kind of arguing.

Tonks said, "This was probably about Quidditch. Your dad loved it. Grandpa Charlus didn't dislike it, but he liked griping about the decline of wand sports and wishing Quidditch was less popular. I remember that. It's the only thing I saw them argue about. Aunt Lily agreed with Grandpa Charlus too, which must've annoyed Uncle James. Your dad, I mean."

Harry's throat was closing up again, so all he did was nod.

"I could make copies of all these pictures for you. Would you like that?"

"I'd love that," he said, knowing his voice was rough.

She smiled and give him a hug. Harry wasn't used to hugs, so he was stiff, but after a moment he relaxed.

"That's me holding you," said Tonks, pointing to another picture.

"It doesn't look anything like you."

"I was in my Tiger-Lily phase." Her skin, hair, face, body, everything shifted, and she didn't look like herself at all.

"How do you do that?" He'd assumed her changing her hair before was some sort of Transfiguration, but changing her whole body seemed like a lot, and she wasn't using her wand at all.

"I'm a metamorphmagus." She must've understood his blank expression, because she said, "That means I can change my body a lot. No spell needed. It's an innate ability. It runs through the Black family, but it's not very common even in the Blacks."

Harry said, "I think I might have done that once. Just a little bit. I got a very bad haircut and I regrew it over night."

Tonks frowned. "That's probably just accidental magic, but maybe... You might have a minor or latent ability. Grab my hair."

He grabbed a hunk, gently, and it grew longer and turned pink.

"Feel that?" she said.

"I feel your hair getting longer."

Without getting any longer, her hair ran through a rainbow of colors. Pink, orange, red, bue, violet, black, brown, gold, yellow. "Feel that?"

"It's tingly," said Harry.

"Now tingle like that while wanting your hair to be longer."

Harry screwed his face up in a concentration, wishing very hard for his hair to be longer, but nothing happened.

"Right," said Tonks. "Keep at it in the back of your mind while we look at pictures."

Harry was more than ready to give up after twenty minutes, but Tonks was not. They kept looking at pictures, with Tonks telling stories about them and reminding him now and then to think about his hair being longer, and at not much less than an hour, a lock of black hair fell across his glasses.

"Did I?"

"You made it longer," she confirmed. "Now make it white."

After half an hour of effort, his hair had streaks of white.

"That seals it," said Tonks. "You're a metamorphmagus."

"Was is it like this for you?" Starting out small and slow and eventually being able to change her whole body in an instant.

She smirked and shook her head. "I was doing full body transformations as an infant. I'm a natural. You've got just a smidge of talent. But if you train it up, it could be very useful. But come on. Tell me all about the other bits of accidental magic you've performed. Muggle-borns always have great stories."

Harry went through the list, earning laughs about the time he'd turned a teacher's hair blue, and an impressed look about the time he'd, apparently, 'accidentally apparated,' but she was shocked when Harry mentioned talking to a snake.

"Wait. Rewind. And the snake talked back?"

Harry said, "It was a Brazillian Boa Constrictor. It nodded or shook its head to my questions, but all I heard it say..." He thought back, trying to get every word right. "Brazil, here I come. Thanks, amigo."

She shook her head, said, "Let's see about this," and moved her wand through the air, (no incantation, Harry noticed) and a small garden snake appeared on the bed.

"Just a conjuration," she said. "But see if you can talk to it."

Harry looked at the snake and said, "Hello." The snake lifted its head and looked at him, and he didn't notice the way Tonks jerked.

Harry said, "How are you doing?"

"Cold," said the snake. "Where's a rat?"

"I don't have a rat, but I'm warm." He extended an arm, and the snake wrapped around it.

"Better," it said.

"Are you poisonous?"

"No. I'm a strangler."

Out of the corner of an eye, Harry saw Tonks' wand moving again, and the snake disappeared.

He looked up. Her skin was white as paper, her hair as white as snow. Her eyes were huge and black.

"Woah," said Harry.

"You could understand it?" she said.

"Sure. Couldn't you?"

"No. Most people can't. You're a parselmouth, Harry. You can talk to snakes. That's really rare, and it's got a bad reputation."

Harry blanched, and Tonks hurriedly added, "Not that it's actually bad, of course. It's fine. But You-Know-Who could do it, and that made its reputation even worse." She'd always thought of parseltongue as a dark ability, but she couldn't tell him that.

Harry said, "Voldemort could do it? I don't want to be like Voldemort."

Voldemort. He'd actually said the name. Well, it would be weird if the Boy-Who-Lived didn't. "You don't want to be a parselmouth because You-Know-Who was a parslemouth? You-Know-Who had a wand. Does that mean you don't want a wand?"

Harry said, "Actually... Mr. Ollivander said that the Phoenix that gave the feather for my wand only gave one other feather, and it's the feather in Voldemort's wand."

That was creepy. Really creepy. "And it's a perfectly nice wand, isn't it? You-Know-Who was smart and powerful. That doesn't mean being smart and powerful are bad. It's what he did with it. Parseltongue isn't evil. Speaking it is just an inherited ability, like being a metamorphmagus. Believe me, I've gotten a lot shi—a lot of trouble about that. You should keep it a secret."

Harry said, "I still don't understand why you couldn't understand it."

"All I heard was hissing. You hissing, and it hissing back."

"It sounded like English to me," said Harry.

Tonks said, "We don't want you hissing just because you're looking at a snake or a picture of one." She conjured a small green snake, and Harry spoke to it, then to Tonks, then to it, then to Tonks, and before long he could feel the difference between Parseltongue and English and hear that the hissing wasn't English. Tonks had him keep it up until he could speak English at the snake and parseltongue at Tonks.

By that time, both of their stomachs were growling. They'd met mid-morning, and they'd been talking so long it was well after lunch.

Tonks led him to a painting just off the Hufflepuff dorms and tickled the pear. She led him into the vast Hogwarts kitchen, which was filled with friendly little creatures called house-elves. Tonks tripped over one. She apologized to it, it apologized to her much more desperately, and it led them to a corner of the kitchen set aside for visiting students.

Tonks asked for two large servings of Indian curry, (Harry had only ever had curry once before, and it hadn't been nearly as good) and they had a leisurely late lunch, interspersing discussion of the school with discussion of what Tonks remembered of his parents and grandparents, though Harry thought by the end she was starting run out of memories. She'd been a child, after all.

"I know some of the Professors have pensieves. I'll ask around, and maybe you can actually watch some memories of your parents."

That led to an explanation of what pensieves were, and Harry got excited about the idea, and Tonks had to tell him she wasn't sure if it would happen.

Then they were leaving the kitchen, and Tonks was giving her parting advice. "Study hard and practice harder. I get very good marks, and I wish I'd worked harder. Everyone wishes they'd worked harder. You will too. So do it. And make sure you've read your introductory books."

"You mean my textbooks?"

"No, your introductory books." Harry stared blankly at her, and she said, "You know. Since you're muggle-raised." He still looked blank. "You didn't get introductory books?"

"Hagrid didn't say anything about that."

"Hagrid?"

Harry explained about his visit to Diagon Alley, and Tonks rubbed her temples.

She led him to the library and picked out four books. "First, Hogwarts: A History." She dropped it in his arms. "I know it's big, but I remember liking it." Two more. _An Overview of the Wizarding World_ and _An Overview of Wizarding Britain_. "I've never read these, but I know muggle-borns who have. I hear they're dull but informative, and at least they're short." Pocket-sized. "And finally... here. The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Every wizarding kid reads these. I'm sure your dad read it to you when you were small, even if you were too small to understand. It'll help you understand wizarding culture, probably. Read these as soon as you can, while still doing your homework and everything."

Harry smiled awkwardly, and Tonks said, "Is something wrong?"

"Reading gives me a headache after a while," Harry admitted. He turned red and looked at his feet.

Tonks said, "Do you need new glasses?"

Harry blinked at her.

An hour later, they left the hospital wing, Harry wearing new glasses and marveling that he'd never known the world was supposed to be so clear.

Tonks checked the time with a spell. It was just after dinner (which, due to their late lunch, they'd skipped) and she said, "I'm going to the Gobstones club. First meeting of the year. Want to come?"

"What's gobstones?"

"It's a game. You'll see. It's easy. It's fun." She took his arm and led him.

Classroom 22b was large and didn't have any desks. Instead, the floor was scattered with concentric circles, like targets, and there were cushions around them to sit or kneel on. The classroom was filling with students, most of them young, but a few were closer to Tonks in age.

Harry saw Seamus and Dean, and Hermione. She looked to be arguing with another girl, and about ready to storm off. She saw him, and brightened slightly. Harry wasn't sure he wanted to approach her, but Tonks gave him a push forward.

Hermione said, "Hello Harry. Do you know very much about gobstones? I only just heard about it, so I haven't read about it at all. Do you think it's very much like Go? I hope so. I play that with my mum or dad sometimes."

"I don't know," said Harry. "Tonks brought me, is all."

Hermione looked at the seventh-year girl, and shot an inquiring look at Harry.

"She's my cousin, sort of," said Harry.

"Oh," said Hermione, sounding very small all of a sudden. "Of course you have family here."

"Very distant family," said Tonks. "His great-grandfather is my great-great grandfather. But unfortunately, we're about the closest family we've got left, other than Those-Who-Must-Not-Be-Abided."

"Who?" said Hermione.

"The Malfoys," Harry whispered, apologetic about the very fact that he was related to them, wondering why Tonks had brought it up.

Hermione giggled, which surprised Harry. He hadn't thought she knew how to giggle. She said, "Those-Who-Must-Not-Be-Abided. Right."

Professor Flitwick stood up on the table at the front, thanked everyone for coming, explained that the purpose of the club was to have fun and meet new people, and, "for those who don't know," explained how to play.

It was a lot like marbles. Hermione whispered, "Not like Go at all."

Harry sat with Hermione, Tonks, and a third-year Hufflepuff named Wynowa Cyrer, and started playing, Tonks giving everyone tips, some of them bad.

Harry hit one of Hermione's marbles out of the circle, and a stream of yellow, smelly liquid squirted out of the marble and hit Hermione in the face. Rather than shrieking, Hermione wrinkled her nose and said, "Disgusting."

Tonks laughed. "It's a ridiculous game. But don't worry. The squirt wears off after a minute."

Even as Tonks spoke, the liquid was disappearing, and the smell was rapidly fading.

Tonks said, "It's a silly game. If you're serious about it, you'll be silly too. But if you're silly right back to the game, it'll be serious. Hermione, it's your term."

Hermione flicked her marble and knocked one of Harry's out of the circle. It squirted Harry with a blue fluid that smelled like drain cleaner, and Hermione hid a smile behind her hand.

#

#

Tonks spoke to Harry briefly on Sunday, and chatted with him Monday and Wednesday after dinner, feeling more and more throughout the week that she had a little cousin/nephew/brother thing. Friday, she heard a strange rumor.

Tonks accosted Harry in a hallway and led him to a stone bench, partially sheltered from sight by two sutis of armor.

Tonks said, "I hear you're on the Gryffindor Quidditch team."

"Yeah," said Harry, smiling. "Professor McGonagall said I'll play Seeker."

Did she now? "Did you ask to be on the Quidditch team?"

"No." He told her the whole story about Malfoy and the remembrall and how Professor McGonagall had dragged him to Wood to be Seeker. He realized at the end that Tonks was mad.

"Harry, being on the Quidditch team should be your decision. You should have to decide to go to tryouts, not be dragged onto the team by your Head of House. It's your choice. It's up to you. But I think you shouldn't be on it."

"What? Why? Everyone's excited."

Tonks said, "Three reasons. First, Quidditch is dangerous. As you get older and your magic becomes more powerful, it will become less dangerous. You'll be harder to hurt. But now you're just a first-year. Second, you need to be working hard at school. Being muggle-raised, there's a lot you don't know. Are you reading those books I recommended?"

"I'm a third the way through _Hogwarts: A History_ ," said Harry. It was a surprisingly fun read. Hermione had come up to him when she'd seen him reading it in the common room, and they'd had a nice talk about the parts he'd read, though she'd told him a lot more than he'd wanted to know about the parts he hadn't gotten too.

"Good. But the Quidditch team takes a lot of time." Her housemates on the team had complained about that. "You should only join the Quidditch team if you've already proven you can get good marks and have time left over. You haven't done that yet. You'd probably have to quit the gobstones club too."

Harry frowned. He liked the gobstones club and it was only an hour a week.

"Third, do you like how everyone stares at you?"

"I hate it."

"Then what do you think will happen when you're allowed to join the Quidditch team a year early, even though the rules say first-years can't?"

Harry gasped. "Everyone will stare even more, and they'll say I'm getting special treatment." That reason mattered a lot more to Harry than the others. Being on the Quidditch team suddenly struck him as a very bad idea.

Harry said, "But I only didn't get in trouble for the remembrall thing because Professor McGonagall thought I should be on the team. What if they expel me?"

Tonks was past angry. Her hair was bright, fiery red, and it was moving. "First, students only ever get expelled for serious crimes. For riding a school broom when you weren't supposed to, you might at most get a few detentions. And if Professor McGonagall is giving you a choice between punishment and being on the Quidditch team, that's reprehensible."

"But Madam Hooch said that if we touched the brooms, we'd be out of Hogwarts before we could say Quidditch."

"Then she was lying. She was probably angry at herself for forgetting to cast the safety charms. She's the one who got called into the Headmaster's office for a tongue lashing, not you.

Harry's eyes widened at that.

Tonks said, "But it's your decision. Just think about what I said. And don't let anyone else make the decision for you. If Professor McGongall tries to give you a detention over it, tell me, and I'll scream at her for you."

#

#

As it turned out, when Harry told Professor McGonagall that he didn't want any rules bent for him and he wanted to focus on classes, she didn't try to punish him at all. But when he told Ron about it at Sunday dinner, Ron choked on a bread roll.

"You quit the Quidditch team!" Ron cried, open-mouthed, once he'd coughed the bread out.

"I didn't quit it. I'd never really been on it. I said I didn't want to be on it." Ron was looking at him like he was crazy, and Harry blurted out all the reasons. "I've never even seen a Quidditch match, and in my first year I want to focus more on school, and besides, I don't want any special treatment for the whole Boy-Who-Lived thing. Nothing that even looks like special treatment."

Ron said, "That's daft, Harry. I'd never quit the Quidditch team, no matter what."

Harry was nervous about disagreeing with Ron, but Ron calling those reasons daft was like calling Tonks daft. "That's because you love Quidditch. But I've never seen it and I've never played it, so I can't love it. Right now, I need to focus on turning matchsticks into needles, not flying brooms and catching balls."

"You're betraying Gryffindor. You can win loads of house points on the Quidditch team."

Hermione, who was sitting across the table and two seats down, said, "He can win points by studying and answering questions. Besides, if the team is so bad it wants a first-year who's never seen a Quidditch match, it's not likely to do very well even if it has the first-year, now is it?"

Ron said, "You stay out of it,"

Harry still wasn't completely sure if he liked Hermione or not, but after seeing her twice at the gobstones club and talking with her about a book, he knew she was alright at least, and she was an ally. "She makes sense, though. I'm here to learn magic, not play Quidditch. Wood said I'd be the youngest Seeker in a century, and I don't need people talking about how the rules don't matter for the Boy-Who-Lived."

Hermione said, "I think it's a very mature decision."

Ron looked between the two of them. "It's a stupid decision. I'd never turn down a spot on the team."

Harry said, "Good thing I didn't take the spot, then. This way, they'll probably hold Seeker tryouts next year, and maybe you'll make the team."

Ron said, "Bloody mental," shook his head, and ate a sausage, still grumbling, but no longer arguing.

Harry let out a deep breath. That was it? That was it. No, that wasn't it. Ron would bring it up again. But it wasn't like with the Dursleys. There wouldn't be any screaming. Ron wouldn't stop being his friend just because they'd disagreed. It had probably helped that Hermione had backed him up. Hermione was pretty decent, even if she did keep shoving her nose into his business.

Harry said, "Hey, Hermione, want to practice spells together after class?"

Ron gave him an incredulous look, but Harry ignored it, and Hermione smiled.

#

#

Tonks and Harry established a routine. On Saturdays, at 10:30, they'd meet in the kitchens (Harry had to stand on tip-toe to tickle the pear) and have a large brunch, talking over it. At some point they'd move into an abandoned classroom and do homework, Tonks frequenty helping Harry with his.

She'd have him work on spells, insisting that he not just learn them but 'master' them. Harry liked that part. Reading was better now that he had good glasses, but he wouldn't ever be Hermione when it come to studying. Practicing spells, though, that he could happily do for a long time, and Tonks taught him a few spells that weren't in his books at all, focusing especially on Defence, since Quirrell was a bit rubbish as a teacher.

Then they'd work on metamorphmagery a bit. Harry was getting better at changing his hair, and Tonks said that eventually he'd be able to adjust the the lenses in his eyes and not need glasses anymore.

Just when it was starting to feel way too much like a lesson, they'd go to dinner, and from there to Gobstones and meet up with Hermione.

Harry wasn't sure if Hermione actually liked gobstones, but she always came, and he and Hermione had become friends, which was a bit tricky since Ron and Hermione weren't friends, even though they were getting on better. Mostly, they ignored each other.

Once the three of them had been sitting on a couch in the Gryffindor common room, with Harry in the middle. Ron had made a joke about Seamus clogging the toilet, and Hermione had said, "Harry, tell Ron to stop making such disgusting bathroom jokes." Harry had turned to Ron and said, "Hermione says to stop making such disgusting bathroom jokes," and Ron had said, "Harry, tell Hermione to stop telling me what to do," and it had gone on like that until Harry had refused to keep playing his part.

Over a month into the year, Harry agreed to a midnight duel with Draco Malfoy.

When Malfoy had stalked off with his Crabbe and Goyle, Hermione said, "Harry, that was a horrible idea. It's against the rules. You'll lose points for Gryffindor."

Ron said, "He couldn't just turn it down."

Harry, who'd had a moment to imagine what Tonks would say, said, "I could've turned it down, and I should've, but it's too late. I've already agreed. Now I have to win and not get caught." He was fairly sure that's what Tonks would say. And then she would tell him to kick Malfoy's ass.

Hermione pulled at her hair and shrieked, "Boys!"

She kept trying to convince him not to go, but Harry said he couldn't go back on his word. Though maybe the real reason was that he was eager to try his hexes on Malfoy. The little mock duels he'd had against Tonks so he could practice his Defence spells were always disappointing because of just how much she usually stayed seated and laughed a lot.

When it was time to leave, Hermione said again that it was a horrible idea and so she had to go with them, and Neville Longbottom joined in by complete accident. But Draco wasn't in the trophy room, just Filch, and they ran and reached a locked room. Harry and Hermione cast Alohomora at almost the same moment, and the four of them slipped into a room, and by the light of Lumos, met a three-headed dog.

#

#

Harry said, "We should tell Tonks about the three-headed dog."

"She'll tell on us," said Ron.

Hermione said, "Oh please, Ronald. You don't know her at all. I'm far more likely to turn us in than Tonks is."

"You wouldn't."

"I might."

Harry said, "She won't. Neither will Tonks. But it's probably guarding whatever Hagrid took from Vault 713, so we should tell someone."

Hermione said, "That doesn't make any sense. I'm sure the Professors already know. They must be the ones who put the dog there, after all. But we should ask Tonks about it at least. She knows everything about the school."

Harry gave Hermione a confused look. As far as he knew, she'd only ever met Tonks at gobstones club, and that was a lot of confidence. But he didn't disagree. "Sorry Ron, you're outvoted."

"It's our secret."

"How is it a secret?" said Hermione. "Neville knows too. Lots of people probably know. Dumbledore said right were the door is the very first day of the year, and you only need to know Alohomora to unlock it, and that's a first-year charm. It undoes Colloportus, and according to _An Overview of Wizarding Britain_ , Colloportus isn't a serious Locking Charm at all. It's just a way of politely saying that an area is off-limits."

Ron frowned. "When you put it like that, there's no way Fred and George haven't looked in the room at least."

"So we should ask Tonks," said Harry. "For all we know, there's usually a dangerous monster somewhere in the castle."

"I very much doubt it," said Hermione, sounding nervous.

"Fred and George would've told me," said Ron.

"Let's ask Tonks," said Harry.

They found her in the library, hard at work with other seventh-years amidst a sea of books and parchment. Hermione clasped her hands and looked as if she was struggling to not squeal.

Tonks said, "You sprogs want something?"

Harry said, "We were hoping to ask you a question. Privately."

Tonks raised an eyebrow, made her excuses to her study partners, and led them to a sheltered spot at the back of the library.

Surrounded by fat reference manuals, Harry said, "We noticed there's a big scary dog in a locked roon on the Third-Floor."

"Fluffy?" said Tonks. "He's sweet. Hagrid got him about two, three years ago. I think it was summer before my fifth year. I'm not sure what he's doing in there, but the space is bigger when the door's closed without anyone inside, I think. I've stopped by to give him treats and scratch his belly."

The three of them stared at her. Ron said, "Are we talking about the same dog? Three heads, very large, sounds like a muggle car when it growls."

"That's the one," said Tonks.

"So he's not dangerous?" said Hermione.

"He could be bloody dangerous if he wanted, but he'd never hurt a student. There are spells on him to make sure. Like the giant squid. I don't know why he's in there, but I imagine he's a bit lonely, so he'd probably appreciate you three stopping by when you've got the time. Bring a few raw steaks and he'll love you forever."

Harry felt dazed.

Hermione said, "But he was guarding a trap door. I saw it."

"Sure," said Tonks. "There's an obstacle course under there. Parts of it are still under construction, probably why it's off limits, but I've been through it. Pretty fun. It's a good idea, so I wish they'd started on it earlier. There isn't anything at the end, but there's space for it."

The three of them exchanged yet more shocked looks.

Tonks said, "You three should go through the obstacle course, but probably more toward the end of the year once you've learned more spells. Or maybe even wait until it's officially open. But I don't know when that will be, so I guess any time would do. I asked Professor Flitwick, and he says it's variable. It reads the competency of its contestants and adjusts accordingly. Weak against the weak and strong against the strong. Very advanced magic."

Ron said, "So there isn't anything valuable at the end of it?"

"Not that I saw. Why?"

So Harry lowered glanced through the shelving to be sure no one was near, lowered his voice, and explained about Hagrid emptying Vault 713 just before the break in at Gringotts and how they had thought there was something very valuable hidden in the Third-Floor corridor.

Tonks looked interested and amused, but mostly concerned. She said, "I would think this was nothing if not for the break in at Gringotts. That happened. I read about it. But if I were Albus Dumbledore, and I had something very valuable or very dangerous that a dark wizard was after, I would not have Rubeus Hagrid pick it up. Hagrid is a sweet old chap, but no. Definitely not."

Tonks continued, "As it is, I'd guess Dumbledore is playing a game, but a game for high stakes, and the obstacle course might be part of it. I don't like that he's using the school to play it in, but you three sprogs stay out of it. Keep your noses clean, you hear?"

Harry nodded. He felt silly.

#

#

:::

This is very much a sketch, and is going to be, perhaps, more Tonks focused than Harry focused. Plotwise, my ideas for it are very similar to Geek of Magic, (which is bad) but the tone's different.

The timing of the duel is a little delayed. I don't know. Butterfly effect.

I know some people think Ron should've been a lot nuttier about Harry turning down Quidditch. But Ron isn't that bad the first couple books. (I think Harry is somewhat to blame for enabling Ron's worst traits, though considering Harry's background, his doing so is understandable)

I know I've been skipping horribly from project to project. Sorry. But I was in a Tonks mood for a few days, and so this was produced, so why wouldn't I publish it? There's quite a few more words already written, and so far, Andromeda seems awesome.


	2. Chapter 2: Holidays

Ch 2: Holidays

At their Saturday brunch on October the 26th, Harry had mentioned to Tonks how much he was looking forward to the Halloween feast.

Tonks had given him an odd look and said. "I like parties. I like parties too much. And Halloween is big party, with most people feeling very cheerful about the end of You-Know-Who. But to me, Halloween is the day Uncle James and Aunt Lily died and cousin Harry was sent away to live with muggle relatives I couldn't visit. So I usually don't go to the Halloween feast."

Harry had gotten very wide-eyed, and going to the Halloween feast and having fun with his friends had seemed like the worst thing imaginable.

So on Halloween, with a bit of trepidation over whether Ron and Hermione would kill each other without him to keep them separated (though considering their respective ability with spells, it was likely Hermione who'd do all the killing) Harry and Tonks had gone to the kitchens for a quick dinner an hour before the feast was set to start.

After that, they wandered through the castle, Tonks retelling her small repertoire of stories about his parents, Harry happy to hear the stories again. She talked about NEWTs and why she wanted to be an Auror and gave a largely unabridged account of her ongoing feud with Stacy Millmock, which made Harry bring up Draco Malfoy, so they talked about strategies for getting unpleasant people to leave you alone.

Even though you weren't supposed to do any magic in the corridors, Tonks helped him with the Levitation Spell, which he'd been doing alright by the end of Charms but still felt uncomfortable with.

On the second floor, a clatter drew their attention. Peeves floated around the corner, carrying sticks of chalk, intent on prank some prank or another.

"Nymphadory with ickle Potty," Peeves said.

Tonks cast a tired glance at Peeves.

"Nymphadory with ickle Potty. Nymphadory with ickle Potty. Nymphadory with ickle Po-"

"Would you bloody shut up," said Tonks. The tip of her wand glowed bright white, and Peeves' substance simmered.

"Cruel Nymphadory," said Peeves.

Harry said, "Is that Lumos? Lumos can hurt ghosts?"

Tonks said, "You have to direct it, but yes. But watch this. It's overkill for a ghost, but Peeves deserves it. _Expecto Patronum."_

A large jackrabbit of sliver light leapt out of her wand. Its paws worked as if it were running despite the fact that its paws weren't touching the ground, and it leapt into Peeves, knocking him through a wall so hard and fast Harry imagined Peeves going through the wall behind that one, and the wall behind that one too.

Tonks laughed. "I've been wanting to do that. It's a hard spell. Meant for dementors, but it works fine on ghosts. And poltergeists."

"I want to learn it."

"The Patronus Charm? You're not nearly ready for that, sprog. Using Lumos against ghosts, though... we could work on that. And Malum Exspiravit also works on ghosts and poltergeists, and Neco Wight if you're a little less worried about hurting it. Those are probably beyond you too but not as far as the Patronus Ch-"

A loud thunk interrupted her. She said, "Is the little blighter actually coming back?"

Another loud thunk. Tonks sniffed. Her nose and ears both grew. She sniffed, and her ears grew into large cat ears.

Harry said, "I thought metamorphmagic changes were only superficial."

"Unless you're really good. Be quiet. There's something big coming." Her wand was up, at the ready, and Harry imitated her stance.

"It's probably nothing," she said. "Just a Weasley prank, or Peeves again." But she moved in front of him.

Two corridors met in a T junction. One corridor terminating, the other continuing past. Harry and Tonks were along the corridor that continued past, near the intersection. From the corridor that met came a vast grayish figure at least two feet taller than Hagrid, dragging a large club, not running, not roaring, looking like a very large caricature of a very stupid six-year-old.

It drew up in surprise when it saw them.

"Troll," said Tonks, sounding quite calm except for a small rough note at the bottom of her voice that indicated that some part of her mind was loudly screaming. That, plus the fact her hair had turned white. "Harry stay behind me. Trolls can be talked to." They could be employed, even. She raised her voice. "Hello. Are you... lost?"

The troll raised its club.

" _Stupefy_!" shouted Tonks, and a red light struck it in the face. It jerked back, but did not look even close to falling, and was hit in the face by another Stupefy.

" _Flipen_ _d_ _o_!" shouted Harry, even though he knew the Knockback Jinx, at the strength he used it at, would have no real effect.

It stepped forward through the hail of Stupefys and Knockback Jinxes, and its club wrapped around its neck. Thick gray cords enwrapped its ankles. It would've fallen forward onto them if Tonks' own Knockback Jinx hadn't tilted it backward, and even after it had fallen hard backwards onto the stone floor of the corridor, a constant stream of Stunning Spells shot from her wand, striking it again and again on its thick brow until it had stopped moving. She conjured more gray cords, around its legs, around its arms, around its entirety until Harry could hardly see any of it beneath the cords, then she hit one of the uncovered parts of its face with another Stunning Spell.

Tonks slumped against a wall and said, "I can't believe I just did that. Changing its club like that is the best Transfiguration I've ever done."

Though he was still not very used to doing so, Harry gave her a hug.

Tonks said, "Merlin Harry, I should be comforting you. She patted his head, then wrapped him in a crushing hug, lifting him off his feet and swaying slightly.

She dropped him and whirled back toward the troll, wand at the ready, though Harry hadn't noticed it make any movement or sound.

Her hair was going back and forth between bright red and a soft, brownish orange, and Harry wondered what that signified.

She said, "Bloody hell, you're calmer than I am. Weren't you scared?"  
Harry shook his head. "You're going to be an Auror. I figured you could handle it. I wasn't worried."

"Right. I did handle it. I didn't even use the Reductor Curse. No killing. Just a nice, clean capture. We need to find a Professor."

Harry said, "I'll go-"

"You are staying with me! There might be more of them."

They heard footsteps. Tonks raised her wand again, and her hair turned a serene green when Professors McGonagall and Flitwick came around the corner.

Tonks said, "Professor, me and Harry, a troll attacked us. I knocked it out." She gestured to the mass of cords.

"I see," said McGonagall, "but it's Harry and I, Miss Tonks."

Tonks laughed, a little high-pitched.

Professor Flitwick went immediately over to the troll and started casting. Making sure of it, Harry supposed.

"Why weren't the two of you at the feast?" Professor McGonagall said.

Tonks said, "Halloween isn't a day our family celebrates. You understand."

Harry's heart leapt into his throat. The phrase 'our family' was almost more shocking than the troll.

"Quite," said Professor McGongall. She peered at the bound troll. "I take it you transfigured its club? That sort of work will get you an O on your Transfiguration NEWT. Well done. 100 points to Hufflepuff, for saving a student's life. Mr. Potter. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Nothing. The troll came. I kept casting the Knockback Jinx at it until it stopped moving."

Professor McGongall said, "You didn't run? You thought you could fight it?"

Tonks said, "I wanted him to stay with me. There could've been more trolls, for all we knew." She twitched. "There aren't more trolls, are there?"

Professor McGonagall looked concerned at the thought, but said, "Not as far as we know."

"Good. And Harry was only doing what was proper. He's got a mean Knockback Jinx for a first-year."

Professor McGonagall said, "25 points to Gryffindor, Mr. Potter."

#

#

After accepting congratulations from her housemates for defeating a troll and earning a hundred house points in a single night, provoking hopes that Hufflepuff might actually win the cup, Tonks lay in bed, thinking about it.

The troll had probably been an indirect assassination attempt on Harry. She didn't know how the troll had found him or how the assassin had known he wouldn't be at the feast, but it was too much of a coincidence that they were the first students it had met. She would have to spend more time with Harry, and she should talk to the older Gryffindors and make sure Harry had a good seventh-year keeping an eye on him wherever he went.

She'd been thinking of staying at the castle over Christmas to study for her NEWTs, and that was now a plan set in stone, never mind how much her mother complained. And developing Harry's skill in Defence had gone from a good thing to do to a major priority.

Surely little brother/cousin/nephew thingies weren't normally so much trouble to keep alive.

And then there was the other matter.

The next day, during a free period, Tonks squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and marched to Dumbledore's office. The password was Licorice stalks, and she guessed it on her fifth try.

When she entered, Dumbledore looked up from a parchment, one likely taken from the tall stack of parchments on the corner of his desk, and said, "Miss Tonks. Thank you for your good work on the troll. Well done."

"Yes, Headmaster, about that." She explained her concerns. About the troll, and about Harry having seen Hagrid remove from Gringotts what was, presumably, dark wizard bait.

The Headmaster listened and smiled and twinkled, and when she had finished speaking he said, "I'll give you the same advice you gave the children. Stay out of it. Keep your nose clean."

Tonks said, "I want to stay out of it, but if whatever you're doing involves whoever broke into Gringotts, you shouldn't be playing this game in a school and you shouldn't be involving Harry."

Dumbledore said, "No one will come to any harm."

"That troll could've done a lot of damage if it had come across a group of first-years."

"An event beyond my expectations, and one I've taken steps to make sure is impossible going forward."

Tonks frowned. She'd always trusted Dumbledore implicitly, but now he was endangering Harry. Endangering the whole castle.

Dumbledore said, "My game, as you call it, must involve Harry Potter, because it is about Harry Potter. I have always known that there are those who hate Harry Potter, and I've always expected that at least one of them would attempt to kill him his first year. My game, and yes, it does involve the obstacle course, is a way, round-a-bout though it may be, to foil that would-be assassin. But that's all I'll say."

Tonks nodded. That made a little sense, at least, in an abstract way, though she couldn't in the slightest imagine what the plan looked like. She said, "Are you going to keep the obstacle course past next year?"

Dumbledore scratched his beard. "In truth, I had not thought to. Once it had fulfilled its purpose, it would be done. But we have put a lot of work into it, and a lot of students are having fun with it... The Weasley twins went through it just last week." He was nodding. "Make a few modifications over the summer, replace the less sustainable obstacles, and why not? It could do a bit to make up for our problems with attaining and retaining good Defence Professors. 15 points to Hufflepuff, Miss Tonks, for your excellent suggestion."

#

#

On Christmas morning, Tonks at a table at the back of the Hogwarts kitchens, three presents wrapped in red and gold on the spare chair beside her. She hoped he liked his present, or presents rather, and she was a little nervous about hers.

She'd helped him fill out the Owl order forms for Ron and Hermione and even Neville, who seemed to sidling sideways into Harry's group, and if he hadn't got her one, she'd be very disappointed.

The portrait opened and Harry came through, holding a present.

"Breakfast first." She gestured to a pot of spicy shrimp soup and a plate of crab cakes. "At the Tonks household, this is the traditional Christmas breakfast. A little light, perhaps, but we're saving room for Christmas dinner, which is not light at all."

They dug in, and Harry seemed very appreciative of the meal. He hadn't been sure about spicy food at first, but he'd gotten used to it quickly.

The meal made Tonks smile. What the house-elves had whipped up wasn't quite what her dad produced, but it was close.

When breakfast was concluded, both of them quite full, it was time for presents. Tonks said, "You've got gifts from my parents as well."

"But I didn't get them anything," Harry said.

"You're fine. They remember you. Kids don't generally get anything for adults." Her mother had been thrilled that she'd "re-established the connection," and was "re-building family ties."

From her father, Harry got a gobstones set. From her mother, a book called _Proper Deportment for Young Gentlewizards_ , which was so very like her mother that Tonks winced.

She said, "Here, open mine."

He tore open the wrapping paper, revealing a box and a some dragon leather strapping.

"The box is a wand care kit. Wands are alive, in a sense. If you take care of yours properly, it'll last as long as you'd like. And this," she pointed to the dragon leather strapping, "is a wand holster. So comfortable it's nearly unfeelable. Straps onto your forearm. Once you get used to it, you'll be able to get your wand out with nothing but a flick of your wrist. A lot of Aurors wear theirs to bed. Here, I'll help you put it on."

It took several tries before Harry got a hang of, and his wand took a dip in the remains of the soup following one overly energetic flick, but before long it was smacking smoothly into his palm.

"Open mine," said Harry, pressing the present into her arms.

Something hard and something soft. The something hard was an advanced book on Defence, one she hadn't read yet. The something soft was a yellow and blue scarf that moved around, rather like a snake. You controlled it by pulling on the fringe, and could grab people with it if you liked. She could imagine having a lot of fun with it, but the second something soft arrested her attention.

A shimmering silver cloth spilled out onto her lap, and her lap disappeared.

"Harry, where the blazes did you get an invisibility cloak?"

"I thought, you know, with you planning to be an Auror and everything, you need it more than I do. To stay safe."

"And where did you get it? It's a very nice invisibility cloak." The nicest she'd ever seen. Practically priceless.

"It was my father's. I got it with my presents this morning. There's a note." He dug it out of his pocket and showed it to her.

Tonks examined the note and said, "I think this is Dumbledore's handwriting. It looks like his, and it would make sense. A good invisibility cloak is better than any disillusionment, and there was a war on. There are all sorts of reasons why he might've borrowed it. But Harry, this is clearly a Potter family heirloom. You don't just give it away."

She folded it, surprised by how small it got, and returned it to him.

"You don't want it?"

"I want one just like it. But its yours and it should be yours until you give it to one of your children someday. And you should bring it with you everywhere, because you never know when there might be another incident like the troll. Now come on. I've got a surprise for you in the Headmaster's office, and we can ask him there about why he had the cloak."

The surprise was a pensieve and a bunch of memories of James and Lily that she'd collected, most of them coming from Professors. Dumbledore had been enthusiastic when she'd suggested it, and happy to help.

:::

I'm struggling to find a voice for Tonks that matches her voice in canon.

I am currently trying not to time thinking about Belladonna Malfoy, Harry's number one rival in the dueling club. If she actually existed in canon, instead of just in my head, Belladonna/Harry would be a major ship.

I wrote a book called Monstrosity. By JLL. It's on Amazon. Check the books department. It's about vampires, werewolves, witches, bedtime stories, and one very hardheaded muggle. I'd love if you'd buy it. (Only 99 cents.) I'd be deeply touched if you'd then rate and review it.


	3. Chapter 3: Covering Up

**Ch 3: Covering Up**

Tonks sat at a table in the library with a group of study buddies. Mostly Puffs, with a Gryff and a Claw thrown in for good measure. With the end of the year in sight, they were all studying furiously for their NEWTS.

They were just a table away from a group of first-years. Harry, Hermione, Ron and Neville. Tonks was pleased to see that lately they were studying as if they were preparing for NEWTS too.

Hermione Granger was the most anal retentive 12-year-old Tonks had ever met. She was pushy and untactful to the point of being mean, but she was also hardworking, loyal, decent and passionate. She seemed like a Puff to Tonks, so the fact that she was a Gryffindor suggested tremendous courage beneath that prim and prissy exterior. Tonks wasn't so sure about the quality of the other two, but the Weasley was funny and Neville was nice, and even if they were grumbling about studying, they were letting Hermione push them into it.

Harry wasn't grumbling, not after the talk she'd had with him about what it took to become an excellent witch or wizard like his parents had been, but Tonks knew that after too much time spent memorizing facts and potions recipes he'd insist they practice spells instead, and that was a good counterbalance to Hermione's insistence on rote learning.

Tonks had had to take the girl aside and explain to her that mastering spells to a higher level than was required was, in terms of her long term academic future, a better use of her time than memorizing the dates of every battle in every goblin war.

At some point, the spell practice would turn into a game. The might use the Levitation Spell to race pebbles through an improvised course, or they might animate rocks and have them push each other out of a drawn circle like sumo wrestlers, or, most likely of all, they'd enjoy an hour of mock dueling.

To the best of Tonks' knowledge, Harry had never once lost a mock duel to any of his friends, and maybe he should have let himself lose now and then, but perhaps it was only fair considering the regular poundings she was giving him.

The year was drawing to a close, and no one had tried to kill Harry since the troll.

Hagrid walked into the library and went through the section on dragons, which didn't startle Tonks at all, as Hagrid was always reading up on some magical creature or another. The man quite possibly had more knowledge of the subject than Professor Kettleburn, and, to judge by the comparative scarring, had a better hand with animals.

He spoke briefly with the sprogs, and not long after he'd left, they packed up. Tonks packed her own books, making her good-byes to her study buddies, and tapped Harry on the shoulder as he exited the library.

Tonks said, "You busy?"

Harry said, "We were going to go to Hagrid's, but I don't have to."

Hermione said, "Harry, if it won't take long, you could meet us there."

Tonks said, "It won't take long at all. Just a chat."

"Right then mate," said Ron. "We'll see you at Hagrid's in a bit.

Tonks and Harry walked out with them out of the castle, then wandered the grounds as Hermione, Ron and Neville made a beeline for Hagrid's cottage.

Harry didn't talk about his muggle 'relatives' except when asked, and then she learned only factual matters. He lived in a house with his Aunt, his Uncle, and his cousin. His Uncle sold drills. With everything else, he sidled away. That was concerning. And then there was the fact that he hadn't even thought about going home for Christmas. And innocuous things, that, when thought about, seemed a little less innocuous. Like liking how warm the Hogwarts beds were, and there being extra blankets.

And whenever anyone mentioned the end of the year, he looked sad.

Walking along the pebbly shore of Black Lake, Tonks said, "Harry, I'm not sure if it could happen, but I thought I'd ask. Would you like to spend part of the summer with my family?"

His chin jerked up, his eyes were bright, and his smile was huge. "How long?"

"How long would you like?"

"As long as possible."

"As long as possible? Don't you want to spend time with your muggle family?"

Harry looked down. "Not really."

"Why not?"

"I don't like it there very much."

Time for a little emotional blackmail. Tonks said, "Do you trust me?"

"Of course."

"Then why won't you tell me about your muggle relatives?"

He said nothing, so she knelt and grabbed his face. "Harry. It isn't embarrassing. Whatever they're like doesn't say anything about you. If there's anything to be embarrassed about, they're the ones who should be embarrassed. Understand?"

The faintest nod.

"Why don't you like it there?"

"They don't like me."

"Harry, do they hit you?"

Harry said, "It's not like that. They don't beat me. I mean, they can be rough, Uncle Vernon grabs my ear, and I've been spanked, but never so much there was blood or anything. But I have a lot of chores, and Dudley doesn't have any. Dudley's my cousin. And they call me 'boy' most of the time, not Harry. And they don't celebrate my birthday, but they always have a big party for Dudley. And I'm only allowed to eat at mealtimes even though Dudley can get a snack whenever he wants. They don't like magic, and they don't like that I have it."

Tonks hugged him. She had a new goal. Getting Harry away from his relatives entirely. If she had her way, he wouldn't set foot there ever again.

She had a letter to send to her parents.

#

#

Tonks was walking back and forth across the grounds, mentally composing her pitch to the Headmaster, when, passing the greenhouses, she spotted the sprogs.

They were so busy talking they didn't hear her approach.

Harry said, "Hagrid says it's hatching."

Ron said, "We should go now and watch."

Hermione said, "And skip Herbology? No."

"Yes, we'll skip Herbology. It'll be great. I don't like Herbology."

Neville said, "I like Herbology."

Ron said, "Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?"

Without a moment's hesitation, Tonks cast a privacy charm over them. Draco Malfoy was not far off and he looked to be straining to hear. She had approached Draco at the beginning of the year, seeing as he was her actual cousin and his parents weren't his fault, and he had called her a 'half-blood freak' and scarpered, earning his title as the Cousin-Who-Must-Not-Be-Abided.

Tonks walked into the area defined by the privacy charm and said, "What's that about a dragon?"

Ron and Neville paled, but Harry and Hermione looked startled, then relieved.

Hermione said, "See, now that she knows we have to tell her."

Ron said, "We promised Hagrid we wouldn't tell anyone."

Harry said, "We can trust Tonks, and now that she's overheard us, we might as well explain." Harry glanced toward Malfoy, who seemed puzzled by the sudden cessation of sound. "But let's talk about it away from Malfoy."

Hermione said, "Herbology's about to start. Tonks, could you not mention this to anyone and meet us at Hagrid's during morning break?"

#

#

Tonks and the four first-years stared at the little black dragon on Hagrid's dining table. When it sneezed, sparks blew out its nose.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Hagrid murmured.

Tonks turned different colors. Between the 100 points she'd won knocking the troll out and the drubbing Hufflepuff had given Gryffindor at Quidditch, Hufflepuff had a real chance at winning the House Cup for the first time in her scholastic career.

She wasn't letting a baby dragon mess that up.

Tonks said, "Hagrid, he's going to get too big."

Hagrid said, "Ain't he a sweety pie," scratching the dragon under the chin, jerking his finger back when it tried to bite him, and chuckling.

"Hagrid, you're smarter than this. You know all about dragons. You know you can't keep it."

"Not forever," agreed Hagrid, "but I can keep 'im until he gets too big."

"And that'll happen fast, won't it? Young dragons grow fast."

"He'll double in size every three and a third days," Hagrid agreed equably.

Harry said, "It breathes flame, and you live in a wooden house."

"I can cast a non-flammable charm. Had a lot of practice with that one."

Tonks said, "You could put him in the Forbidden Forest."

Hagrid gaped, "I can't just abandon him."

"Not forever. Just a for a week or two, until he's had time to look like he's been there all along, and then call the Ministry and say, "Look what I found. Non-native, wonder how he got here? Dumped, probably."

Hermione looked scandalized, and Hagrid said, "I won't go lying to the Ministry. Asides, it's dangerous for the little tyke in the Forest. There's somethin' killing unicorns."

"Killing unicorns?" said Tonks. All thoughts of a baby dragon fled her head. Unicorns were lightning fast, and very dangerous when forced to defend themselves. There shouldn't be anything near the school that could manage it. "A poacher hunting horns and hairs?" Disgusting, if that was true. It took time and patience, but if you befriended unicorns, they'd let you have their horns when they grew new ones. Her mother did it professionally.

"No. Just kills 'em, and drains some o' their blood, seems like. Ain't ever heard o' that before."

Her hair turned white again. That had happened a lot this year, and not due to realizing, that she'd forgotten to write an essay due later that day. Something was in the forest, killing unicorns and draining them of blood. "Why haven't I heard about this?"

Hagrid blinked. "I don't think I've rightly mentioned it to anyone."

Tonks said, "You need to tell Dumbledore."

"I can look after the Forest. It's me job. I'll handle it."

"And what about the Forest detentions? You can't have them with something in the forest killing unicorns."

"Forest detentions are supposed to be a tad frightening," said Hagrid. "Filch always tell the students about all sorts of boisterous whatnots deeper in and makes 'em sound scary an' close. It's part o' the detention."

"But it's not supposed to be true!" cried Tonks.

"There's nothin' that lives in the forest that'll harm a student with me or Fang."

"Not even whatever's catching unicorns, killing them, and draining their blood? How many unicorns are we talking about anyway?"

"Just two, so far as I know."

"So far as you know," said Tonks. How to be diplomatic about this. "Hagrid, maybe it would still be fine to send students into the forest with something on the loose that's drinking unicorns," (it wouldn't) "but that that should be Dumbledore's decision, shouldn't it? Otherwise, it would be a worse detention than he intended, and you know he hates to over punish."

"I'm seein' yer point," Hagrid said. "I'll tell 'im tomorrow."

"How about tonight?"

"I've got a flock of grassly kippers to sort out tonight."

"Hagrid. This is more important than lawn care. Tonight."

Hagrid stared at her, and said, "Tonight."

"And you should tell him about the dragon."

"E'd be disappointed."

"And if people found out about the illegal dragon you hatched in your living room he wouldn't have much choice about firing you. Let him cover it up. My mother says he's brilliant at that."

Hagrid nodded. "That's true. One of his hobbies, belike."

Her mother hadn't gone quite that far. "And it isn't right to be involving first-years. They could get in a lot of trouble. Possibly even _expulsion_ for being involved in _illegal dragon smuggling._ "

All four first-years drew in startled gasp. Tonks knew they wouldn't actually get expelled for it. It took a great deal to get expelled from Hogwarts, since it basically forced you to receive your education in another country, where you'd have pay full tuition, which most couldn't afford, but it was approaching the sort of infraction that could get you considered for expulsion. Though Tonks hadn't heard the details, she knew that Hagrid had been expelled for involvement with restricted creatures.

Hagrid glanced at the first-years sitting on his scratchy sofa. "I'll tell 'im today," Hagrid said. "After classes are out. Would you like to come?"

Tonks didn't see any reason why she should, but maybe Hagrid needed moral support and a friendly face. "I have to speak to him anyway, so that would be great."

#

#

When Hagrid told him the story of how he'd gotten the dragon egg, Dumbledore stroked his beard, amused. Fluffy was quite ferocious against non-students, but he hadn't expected Quirrell to have so much trouble with the cerberus. Quirrell clearly wasn't as competent as he'd expected. Or he was pretending incompetence.

And the fact that something was killing unicorns and drinking their blood... He should've seen that coming. It confirmed that Voldemort was, as he'd hoped, currently on the back of Quirrell's head. There was nothing quite like the feeling of a plan coming together.

He wondered if Potter would involve himself. He'd given the boy a few loose ends to pull, and he couldn't decide whether or not he wanted the boy to follow them all the way. If the boy went through the obstacle course and knew about the Philosopher's Stone and believed it was in the mirror, he might very well succeed in drawing out the stone, which could lead to some very interesting eventualities.

Unfortunately, most of them involved Potter dying a premature death, and that would be a waste, as well as a political fiasco. Not to mention tragic.

Dumbledore said, "Thank you for informing me, Rubeus. For the time being, I'll cancel all further detentions to the forbidden forest. And I'll stop by later this evening to take of the dragon."

Hagrid said, "I thought I might look after 'im until he's bigger and more ready. Maybe a week?"

"Very well. Do try to keep him secret, but if anyone does find out, the egg was hatching when I confiscated it from a cowled man in Knockturn Alley. I gave it to you to take care of until we were confident it was ready for the rigors of portkey travel to a reserve on the continent. Understand?"

Hagrid nodded and gave Tonks a relieved look.

Tonks, Dumbledore noticed, was wearing her hair black, and she was using her natural face, even more like Bellatrix's than her mother's. Dumbledore said, "By the look of her, I'd wager Miss Tonks has another matter she'd like to speak to me about. If you'd excuse us."

Hagrid got up, made his bows, and lumbered out of the office, Dumbledore watching him go.

Dumbledore trusted Hagrid. Hagrid was loyal and courageous, he had a vast and warm heart, and while normally quite gentle, could become fierce when needed, and he was surprisingly formidable in a fight. He was also a good deal smarter than he seemed at first, but as Hagrid had explained about both the unicorns and the dragon, Dumbledore had been reminded once again that that intelligence had large and worrying gaps. Whether they were due to Hagrid's giant heritage or were simply reflective of youthful trauma stunting him emotionally and creating blindspots in his view of the world, Dumbledore had never been sure.

Tonks said, "I was hoping Harry could stay at my house over the summer."

Dumbledore smiled gently as he thought. He'd been expecting to send the boy to the Weasleys over part of the summer. He'd have fun there, affection, a sense of family, a childhood, all of which would take a little of the sting from the depressing shape of his wretched life. Dumbledore had been planning a letter to Arthur and Molly.

But Dumbledore hadn't missed the way Tonks was playing mother with Harry. Pushing him to study and practice, and finding time to tutor him even while preparing for her NEWTs. No doubt she'd push him to learn over the summer as well. She'd make him do his homework, at the very least. The Weasleys wouldn't do that. And he gathered that while the latest Weasley, Ron, wasn't a bad sort, he wasn't the best either. Each successive Weasley seemed worse than the last, a trend the incoming girl would hopefully buck.

And while the Weasley family might feel more familial, the Tonkses were closer relatives, which should help the boy grow deep roots in the wizarding world. And while the Tonkses might not be quite as loyal as the Weasleys, they were firmly on the right side. They were part of the Old Crowd, even if not in its inner circle.

What it came down to was that the boy had a destiny. Dumbledore was aiming to contravene that destiny, to take care of it all himself... but he was expecting to fail. He had a great deal of experience with failing and knew what it felt like. If the boy was, as he suspected, a horcrux, then the boy would have to die, an experience he would hopefully survive. But unless Dumbledore was misreading the prophecy horribly, the boy's destiny involved a lot more than just dying.

Harry needed to be competent, at least, and he needed to be willing to die to end Voldemort. The relationship Nymphadora had established with him might suit those goals better than his forming a relationship with the Weasleys would.

Dumbledore said, "You're applying for Auror candidacy, are you not?" Nymphadora Tonks, for all her roguishness, was one of the top students in her year, and Dumbledore kept track of what his top students were up to.

"I am."

"Keep in mind that Harry is, unfortunately, likely going to have to defend himself a number of times throughout his life. If he did stay with your family, it would be most important to make him feel welcome, to make him feel like family, but, if within the confines of that, you could put him on a course of study to prepare him to defend himself, that would be to the good."

Tonks nodded slowly.

"We would have to make a few additional security arrangements. Nothing major. An upgrade to the wards, and I'd keep a trustworthy wand in the area."

"Of course."

Dumbledore said, "You've spoken to your parents about this?"

"They're already getting a room ready, even though I told them to wait."

Dumbledore said, "How long do you think he would stay?" Depending on what she said, it might be possible to have him spend time at the Weasleys as well.

Tonks took a breath. "He won't say much about them, but Harry doesn't want to go back to his relatives. He swears they don't beat him, but they don't like him, and he doesn't like them. I don't see why he should spend any time there at all. He could spend the whole summer with us."

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. Adoption, nearly. But did they want Harry Potter, or did they want the Boy-Who-Lived? He considered using passive legilimency, but seeing as Tonks hoped to be an Auror and her mother was Andromeda Black, there was too much chance she knew a bit of occlumency and would catch him at it.

Besides, from how she was looking, how she was sounding, his knowledge of her personal history, and how she'd treated the boy all year, he was certain she was after Harry Potter. Though with her parents, that was harder to guess.

Dumbledore said, "That's quite impossible, for two reasons. First, there are the Blood Wards. I will not tell you the details, because I have not told anyone the details, but, due to some peculiarities of Harry's magical circumstances, I've been able to raise Blood Wards of exceptional power that depend on his living with his relatives on his mother's side. They protect him absolutely when he lives with them, and even provide him substantial protection when he is elsewhere. Their maintenance is critical to his long term survival."

Tonks said, "He could be protected in a magical household. A couple guards. A Fidelius Charm even."

Dumbledore said, "Harry's own history is the world's most famous case of a Fidelius Charm not being enough. And it does nothing to address his safety when away from home. But if it were only that, I would seriously consider other living arrangements. There's a stronger reason.

"If Harry did not spend the majority of his summer with his Aunt and Uncle, he would no longer have residency there, at which point his nearest relatives would be able to sue for custody. Your family is related to him through the Blacks, but your mother is disowned, casting the claim into doubt. Narcissa Malfoy is just as closely related, and she has not been disowned. Considering all the Malfoys' money and political influence, they would almost certainly win custody, and while I freely admit that the Dursleys are poor guardians, the Malfoys would be far, far worse."

Disappointment was writ across the girl's face, but it was the disappointment of acceptance. She had to accept it. It was true, after all. Or nearly. If the boy made his wishes known, and Dumbledore brought his influence to bear, the Tonkses would likely get custody, but it wasn't a sure thing, (Lucius had far, far more bribe money at his disposal, and there were Death Eaters in positions on influence) and Dumbledore was saving his political capital for more important matters than one child's dreary homelife, like school funding and keeping more Death Eaters from positions of influence.

Dumbledore said, "But that doesn't mean he can't have a nice, long visit." What was the minimum amount of time Harry could spend at the Dursleys? He could leave as soon as July 24th or 25th, perhaps. Best not to cut it too close. "Depending on how the wards behave, I may push it back, but I believe you could pick him up on the First of August and keep him for the remainder of the break. Would that be acceptable?"

Tonks said, "I'll owl my parents."

:::

What I often don't like about Manipulative Dumbledore is that his actions, when seen in that light, tend to make even less sense. Part of this is that JK didn't write him that way. But there's also confusion about his goals. In fanon, the goal of Manipulative Dumbledore is often, "to bring about the plot of the series." For a plot device, that's interesting. For a character, that is deeply weird. I hope my Manipulative Dumbledore will be more normal goals.

Monstrosity, by JLL. It's a teen fantasy novel available of amazon, in the books department. I would love it if you'd buy it (one click, 99 cents!) and review it.

I've got a lot more on this, but it isn't all connected, so there may not be any updates for a while. otoh, I'm nearly to the end of the first year, so maybe I should push through.


	4. Chapter 4: The Forbidden Corridor

**The Forbidden Corridor**

Harry stood in the chamber at the end of the Forbidden Third-Floor Corridor. The obstacle course had been a pleasant break from studying. Fluffy had been frightening, but she wouldn't actually hurt students, so they'd just danced around until they'd had a chance to get through the trapdoor.

The one with the keys and the broomstick had been nice. He'd worried for Ron when he'd been hit by White Queen, but Harry had learned the Reviving Spell from Tonks, and after he'd used it, Ron had popped back up, none the worse for the wear aside from a slight unsteadiness that had passed after a minute.

The troll had terrified Harry, and he'd wondered what on earth it was doing in an obstacle course, but once he'd understood the rules, it had been his favorite obstacle of all. Shooting different targets with different first-year Defence spells had moved different parts of floor up and down, eventually allowing them to trap the troll in a corner.

The logic riddle at the end had been the worst. Harry had stood around feeling useless while Hermione solved it. There had, fortunately, been seven sets of bottles, with plenty of blank spaces showing where previous sets must've been, so Harry supposed that if they'd waited any longer in the year to try the course, there might not have been enough left for them all to get through.

Ron looked at the mirror as the others waited.

Eventually, Hermione said, "Ronald, you've been looking in the mirror long enough. It's my turn.

Ron reluctantly stepped aside told them he'd seen himself as Quidditch captain and Head Boy, etc

Hermione rolled her eyes (Ron didn't see, fortunately) and then Hermione gazed into the mirror, enthralled.

When Hermione had been looking into the mirror longer than Ron had, Harry told her it was Neville's turn. When Hermione had pulled herself away from it, Ron said, "Hermione, what did you see?"

"None of your business."

"That's not very friendly."

Harry said, "Ron, she doesn't have to say if she doesn't want to." They'd already established that the mirror showed 'Not your face, but your heart's desire,' and that might be private.

Ron said, "I said what I saw."

Harry said, "And that's fine too."

Hermione said, "If my deepest, most powerful desire was to be Head Girl and Quidditch Captain, I wouldn't brag about that."

Ron said, "Probably all you saw was a report card of nothing but Os."

Hermione snorted. "That wasn't what I saw. But I hate to break it to you, Ronald, but if you want to be Head Boy, you'll need to get a lot of Os, and not complain all the time about studying."

Neville stood before the mirror, the argument continued, and Harry sighed. He liked them both separately, but together they were a bit much. Like baking soda and vinegar. Unfortunately, they were usually together, since they were usually with him.

The bickering had died down by the time Neville had had a long enough look. Harry pulled Neville away, and Ron said, "What did you see?"

"M-my parents. They were..." Neville trailed off, and, perhaps because he was fresh from arguing with Hermione, Ron didn't pry about what his parents had been.

Harry took his turn, wondering what he'd see.

Earlier, Hagrid had let Flamel's name slip, and when he'd mentioned it to Tonks, she'd told him all about Nicolas Flamel and the Philosopher's Stone, so for the briefest moment, he wondered if the Stone might be hidden in the mirror. But he no longer thought it was in the Forbidden Third-Floor Corridor at all, and he wasn't very concerned with finding it.

Looking into the mirror, he saw himself and about 10 others. A red-haired woman standing right behind his reflection, smiling and waving, yet crying. The black-haired man beside her put his arm around her. From the pictures and the memories Tonks had shown him, Harry recognized his parents.

And there were other people in the mirror, people with green eyes like his, noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly eyes. And standing at the edge of the reflection, some distance from the others, was Tonks, giving him a grin.

He glanced away from the mirror, at Neville. The two of them had more in common than Harry had first thought.

#

#

The night after exams, Quirinus Quirrell stood at the end of the Forbidden Third-Floor Corridor.

The Forbidden Third-Floor corridor was such an obvious red herring that Quirrell had assumed the whole year that the stone wasn't actually there, and he'd made only token efforts to get in, feigning incompetence. But every place he'd checked, even Dumbledore's private quarters (which had been hell to get into) had showed no sign of it, and at last, the day after exams, Quirrell had had no place left to look.

Getting through the obstacle course hadn't been easy for him, and it galled him that at least twenty children had been through it. Variable difficulty was ancient primal magic, of the sort that had little to do with wands, and Dumbledore was using it for a calculated insult.

But at last, Quirrell was through, staring into the mirror. In the mirror, he saw himself holding the stone. But was that just an illusion? Just another red herring? A few detection spells indicated the stone really was in the mirror, but he'd expect Dumbledore to add that sort of layer to his red herring.

The mirror had an inscription, but neither he nor Lord Voldemort recognized the language, (Quirrell thought it looked a little like basque except there weren't any Zs) so there seemed to be little help there. It all came down to skill in magic, and even as learned and powerful as he was, Quirrell knew he would've been lost without his master's instructions.

Even so, they were balancing on a razor edge, the slightest mistake away from being trapped in the mirror along with the stone.

But in the end, by the thinnest of margins, no mistake was made, and out of the mirror came a blood-red stone.

Hands trembling, Quirrell cut himself on it, let the blood soak into the stone, and out of it came a clear fluid not unlike water, if water shone.

He drank it, and energy filled him. His pains, his aches, the slow rotting of his flesh, all gone, all banished, the liquid healing him more even than Unicorn blood had. With this, he could survive his master's exit.

Quirrell said, "My Lord, should we conduct the ritual to restore your body here?"

The hissing voice of Voldemort said. "There's too much chance we'll be interrupted. Proceed to the edge of the grounds as if nothing is wrong, then apparate to hideout three."

Passing through obstacles that were no obstacle at all when going backward through the course, Quirrell said, "The Elixir of Life is just how I thought it would be."

"...Is it now?" said Voldemort.

"I feel so alive."

Still high on success, thrilled by the energy coursing through him, Quirrell spoke out of turn to his master as he seldom did. "Dumbledore should've protected it better."

Voldemort hesitated, too briefly for Quirrell to notice. "It is surprising. But he is getting old. Making mistakes. Letting things slip."

Quirrell came up through the trap door, the Cerberus still asleep to the music. For the briefest moment, Quirrell considered killing it, but Lord Voldemort had warned him of Dumbledore's plans within plans and the danger of doing what was unnecessary.

He ghosted through the still, dark castle reigning in excitement, and caught sight of a small, familiar figure.

"What providence," murmured Voldemort. "Kill him. Not with magic. More indirectly."

Quirrell reached into his pocket.

#

#

Harry's alarm went off, and he rolled out of bed and slipped on his shoes. Followed by pants, a heavy shirt, the jumper from Ron's mum, his robes, and a warm wool cap. It was cold outside.

He had mentioned to Tonks that he'd never watched the sun rise, and according to her, that was unacceptable. Sunrise in Scotland in June happened at an ungodly early hour and Tonks wanted them to watch it 'from even before the sky starts to lighten,' so he was meeting her at the top of the Astronomy Tower at _three-thirty_ in the morning. She'd promised to have pastries and strong coffee.

He slipped on his invisibility cloak last of all, given that that curfew hadn't ended, and exited quietly through the portrait hole.

He headed toward the Astronomy Tower, and before long, took a wrong turn. Hogwarts was dark, lit only be low candles widely spaced and the light of the half moon, and peering through the thin fabric of the invisibility cloak didn't help. Though he was nervous about Filch, he took the cloak off.

He reoriented himself when he realized where in the castle he was, continued on, and a voice said, "Potter."

He jumped, turned and saw the distinctive silhouette of Professor Quirrell, turban and all. Harry shrank, thinking he should've put the cloak back on once he'd figured out where he was.

Harry said, "Professor Quirrell. I'm sorry. I'm up early, not late. I'm meeting my cousin at the Astronomy Tower to watch the sun rise. Please don't take any points."

From his pocket, Quirrell drew a long dagger covered in black inscriptions. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm not taking any points."

"Professor?"

Quirrell advanced, knife raised. "Hold still, Mr. Potter. It'll be easier on you that way."

Harry did not think. He reacted to an adult coming at him with a dagger exactly as Tonks had taught him to. " _Flipendo! Impedimenta!_ _Petrificus Totalus._ _"_

With a flick of Quirrell's wand, a dark grey shield rose, like thin black gauze. When each spell struck it, light flashed and thunder rumbled. Quirrell wore an expression both surprised and pained, and Harry shouted, " _Fumos!"_

A thick, opaque cloud of dark grey smoke billowed out of his wand, blocking Quirrell's view.

Quirrell cast the counter spell and the smoke dispersed, revealing an empty corridor.

"What?" said Quirrell.

Beneath his hastily thrown on invisibility cloak, Harry held his breath.

 _"Amplio Auditus,"_ said Quirrell, pointing his wand at himself.

Harry didn't know the spell. But Amplio was like amplify, and auditus... like audio? Amplify Sound? Quiet. Quiet. He had to stay quiet. For several long moments it seemed to work. His lungs burned, but he could let them.

Quirrell smiled. "I hear you, Harry Potter!" Quirrell's wand flicked again, and Harry flipped through the air, his invisibility cloak torn from him. He hit the wall with a thud, his wand flew from his hand, and blood trickled down his forehead and hung on his eyelashes. He was screaming and didn't know it.

"Don't move," said Quirrell, leaning over him, extending the knife.

As it plunged toward him, Harry batted it away with his left hand, too frightened and full of adrenaline to even notice the bloody gash the contact drew on his left hand.

White fire exploded around Professor Quirrell.

#

#

As she walked through the darkened halls of Hogwarts, a blanket under one arm, the handle of a picnic basket over the other, Tonks worried about Harry. Not for any rational reason. She'd worried about Harry frequently ever since the troll. The fear struck her at odd moments, like the thought that something dangerous was hidden in the dark, or the sudden, baseless suspicion that the house would be robbed while she and her parents were away. And she told herself, as she always told herself, that it would be fine, as it always was, and she would feel silly after.

Still, she couldn't help thinking that she should've met Harry right outside the Gryffindor dorms.

So when she heard three large booms, she was primed to draw the correct conclusion.

Before the third boom was over, Tonks had dropped the blanket and set the picnic basket down, hurriedly but not carelessly, since it was probably just some prank of Peeves and she'd be a bloody idiot if she ruined their breakfast for that, and she took off running in the direction she thought the booms had come from.

Another bang adjusted her course, and increasingly close yelling adjusted it further. She dashed down a spiral staircase and saw two figures against a wall not far from the bottom of it. A screaming from a student the size of a first-year, and a familiar turbaned form.

Though she was still whole flights from the bottom, she jumped off the spiral staircase, silently casting Arresto Momentum on herself as she did, keeping her descent just slow enough that she could safely land.

Silver light of the half moon glimmered off Quirrell's raised dagger.

Tonks knew a multitude of fire spells, but even later, looking at the memory in a pensieve, she couldn't say which she used. All of them, perhaps.

White flame blazed toward Quirrell, scorching the stone and roaring like a dragon.

Quirrell whirled, raising his dark shield, and it wasn't quite enough. Tendrils of white flame broke through, reaching for him like a live thing, and even as he dispelled her flame, his skin burned where the flames brushed him, and his turban was set alight.

The tip of his wand batted her Stupefy aside, and a motion of his off-arm threw off the burning turban.

"Kill it," said a sibilant voice even as Quirrell said, " _Avada Kedavra!"_

Green light flashed. She dived aside while conjuring a wolf to take the curse for her, and she silently cast Reducto as Quirrell stumbled, the casting of the Killing Curse appearing to have taken a lot out of him.

Quirrell deflected her blasting curse into a wall with an instinctive Protego. He rifled through a blinding fast series of dark curses that she frantically blocked or dodged, and she was finally caught at the end by the simplest and quickest spell of them all.

Expelliarmus. The Disarming Jinx, cast with no little power. She fell to her knees and her wand flew into Quirrell's open hand.

Though she'd always thought it would be cool to face death with eyes wide open, her eyes flickered shut.

And flickered open when Quirrell screamed.

#

#

When Tonks appeared and attacked Quirrell, Harry thought she would take care of everything. Just like the troll.

Then Quirrell tore his turban off, revealing that he had _a face on the back of his head_.

The face's eyes stared into Harry's, and Harry stared into them.

"Kill it," the face said, even as Quirrell tried to hit Tonks with the green light of nightmares.

Harry thought killing it sounded like an excellent idea. He climbed woozily to his feet as Tonks and Quirrell exchanged a dizzying array of spells, an exchange Tonks was clearly losing from how she was dancing around while Quirrell stood in place.

He didn't see his wand, so he ran at Quirrell.

The face looked surprised. The face said, "Quirrell!"

Then Harry was leaping on Quirrell's back, digging his sharp chin into the thing's face, clawing at Quirrell's own face, burrowing into the Professor's eyes with thin fingers, and Quirrell screamed as smoke rose, Harry not even noticing that wherever he touched, Quirrell's skin burned, and wherever his blood touched, Quirrell's flesh boiled off

Tonks lunged forward and tore her wand from Quirrell's grasp even as her left hand pinned Quirrell's wand arm.

Wand tip right to the man's stomach, she shouted, " _Stupefy,_ " and followed it immediately with a silent disarming, hurling Quirrell's wand halfway down the corridor.

Unconscious, Quirrell fell forward and Harry slipped off his back.

 _"Incarcerous, Silencio,"_ Tonks said, binding Quirrell in tight cords.

Pitted and burned though it was, there was recognizably a face on the back of Quirrell's head, and as she watched, it twitched, one blue eye tracking her wand.

"Bloody hell," whispered Tonks.

Harry spotted his wand, and, still heart still beating so fast he heard his own pulse, he grabbed it immediately.

Grey mist rose from the face, and the grey mist had a face. Vague, like a child's painting, or an oddity of cloud formation, yet even as the mist moved, the face remained.

Harry batted at the grey mist, blood spattering from the deep gash on his hand, and wherever the blood flew, rents were torn through the mist. He waved his wand back and forth through it, sparks fountaining from his wand. Not a spell, but, pure, unshaped magic, the contact of the sparks with the grey mist creating a cracking hiss like pouring cold water on a hot pan.

Harry knew he could do better than sparks. Months ago, on Halloween, Tonks had told him about a spell for doing real damage to a spectre, and she'd said it was probably beyond him. He'd learned it so she'd be impressed.

Harry and Tonks screamed _"Neco Wight!,"_ at the same moment.

The grey mist fled down the corridor, and Tonks chased it with another spell. " _Expecto Patronum_!" she cried, and the shining hare went after it down the corridor, and when it reached the grey mist, the shining hare did what Tonks had never heard or read of a Patronus doing.

It swallowed the spirit whole.

:::

Um, so, I see the last two updates are getting a lot of reviews. But for whatever reason, I can't view the reviews. It's really annoying. I want to read my reviews. They make me happy inside. Please continue reviewing, even in the face of this futility. I assume I'll get to see them someday.

Monstrosity, by JLL. It's on amazon, in the books department. It only costs 99 cents. For a while, I wasn't posting this request at the end, but then I looked at on the Kindle reader again, and reminded myself that it really is pretty good. Adventure, mystery, violence, mostly unstated romance, a twist ending and a weird narrative flip.

I love reviews of my fanfics on this website. But reviews of my book on amazon and goodreads? That's something else.

I feel like this was a good chapter.


	5. Chapter 5: Conversations and Goodbyes

**Conversations and Goodbyes**

Nymphadora Tonks had never read of a ghost like the grey mist that came out of the face on the back of Professor Quirrell. When her Patronus swallowed it, another behavior she'd never read or heard of, she hoped that would be the end of it.

Her Patronus stilled, trembled, and blew apart. The grey mist was, for a moment, broken and scattered. But it gathered itself and continued it flight, racing down the corridor, a clattering rumble building in the background.

Racing up the corridor, coming from the direction it was fleeing, moving a great deal faster than anyone would expect of a man of his years, came Albus Dumbledore.

A bright white light shone from his wand onto the spectre. It twisted, writhed, the light binding around it, as if trying to capture it.

It disappeared.

Swallowing, Tonks turned her attention to the ruined form of Quirrell.

It didn't look to be breathing.

Harry bent and picked up a blood-red stone that lay on the floor next to the still body of Quirrell.

Bright white lights came up from the other corridor, resolving into small horde of cautious, upper-year Hufflepuffs woken by the sounds of battle and come to investigate them. A panting, red-cheeked Professor Snape pushed his way through the Hufflepuffs. His gaze lingered on Harry, and Tonks thought that a brief expression of relief crossed his face before his eyes narrowed.

"Out of bed after curfew, Potter?" said Professor Snape, and Tonks almost laughed at how ludicrous it was to bring that up when a Professor lay bound and possibly dead in the hallway.

Dumbledore, coming closer, gazed at the blood-red stone in Harry's hand and said, as if discussing the weather, "So he succeeded after all." He smiled. He cast a quick spell on Quirrell. "Severus, if you'd secure the body."

Professor Snape nodded.

Dumbledore turned back to Harry and Tonks. "Let us adjourn to my office."

#

#

Dumbledore settled them into his office, seated them in fluffy chairs before his desk, conjured fleece blankets for their laps, and plied them with tea and lemon drops.

Dumbledore said, "What were the two of you doing out of bed at that hour?"

Tonks said, "We were meeting at the Astronomy Tower to watch the sunrise."

"Wholesome," said Dumbledore. "Minus 10 points, each of you."

"You're taking points?" Tonks gaped.

"You did break the rules," Dumbledore said mildly. "Now, rather than asking what happened, I think I'd rather view it. The memory, if you please, Miss Tonks."

Tonks put her wand to her temple, focused on what had happened, starting with her visit to the kitchens to fill her picnic basket, proceeding to when Dumbledore had invited them to his office.

The white string of copied memory came out, and Dumbledore put it in his pensieve and put his head in the pensieve.

Tonks drank her tea, spoke softly with Harry, and when Dumbledore was done viewing her memory and had removed his head from the pensieve, she instructed Harry on how to copy his own memory.

With the white glutinous string wriggling at the end of his wand, Harry wrinkled his nose, the color coming back to his cheeks and the stress leaving his shoulders. He said, "I don't think I copied my memory. I think I took it out."

Dumbledore said, "We'll put it back when we're done."

Dumbledore viewed the memory and put it back in Harry, and Harry went back to looking vaguely like an 11-year-old who'd just survived a murder attempt and had possibly killed the attempted murderer.

Tonks had been sitting on her questions, waiting on them until Dumbledore was up to speed, and now that he'd seen it all she said, "Is that strange ghost destroyed?"

Dumbledore said, "No. Just discorporated. But it will take him time to put himself back together again, especially after the drubbing the two of you gave him." He looked extremely pleased.

"He? What was it?"

Between two sips of tea, Dumbledore said, "That was Voldemort."

Tonks jerked, and her own tea sloshed a few tablespoons spilled onto her lap. Voldemort. Voldemort had been on the back of Professor Quirrell's head under his horrible turban. All year? She'd been instructed by Voldemort all year? She'd even thought Quirrell would be cute if he'd just ditch the turban and stop stuttering, and he'd had Voldemort on the back of his head?

Harry pointed to the blood-red stone Dumbledore had taken from Harry and set on the shelf behind his desk. "Is that the Philosopher's Stone, then? He was going to use it resurrect himself?"

"Oh, you know about the Stone?" said Dumbledore, sounding quite delighted. "You did look into the matter properly. I must congratulate the two of you on stopping him as he left."

Without any memory of getting up, Tonks was on her feet, yelling at Albus Dumbledore and using Voldemort's name for the first time since she'd come to Hogwarts and picked up the habit of not saying it.

"Are you frigging nuts! You're insane! The Philosopher's Stone was here? You had it and you hid it in Hogwarts and Voldemort got his hands on it! Magical Britain was just saved by an 11-year-old and a NEWT student?! Merlin! How incompetent are you! What the bloody hell!"

Dumbledore sighed and took the blood-red stone from the shelf behind his desk. He tossed it from one hand to the other, then dropped it in the dustbin by his desk. He said, "The Philosopher's Stone was destroyed years ago. Nicolas and Perenelle and I had a long talk about it. Voldemort didn't know that. He thought, or at least hoped, that I had it. The stone in my dustbin is a fake. The Flamels and I put some effort into it. It even contains a fluid that mimics, in a superficial way, the effects of the Elixir of Life, though in a truth it's a highly destructive, slow-acting poison. We took inspiration from a class of muggle drugs called methamphetamines."

Dumbledore took another sip of tea. "The Stone was inside a trap, one good enough that even Voldemort, desperate to get the Stone, might have been taken in by it, and captured. But perhaps not. I knew he'd probably just manage it, as he did. And that was the real trap. You see, Voldemort has taken steps to anchor himself to life. I wouldn't be able to destroy him even if I captured him. However, he could destroy himself. Performing the ritual to resurrect himself with the fake Philosopher's Stone would do so. I don't know if he realized that the whole matter was a trap, and choose to get something out of it in Harry's death, or if he simply saw a golden opportunity in Harry being alone in the halls and chose to take it, but the result is much the same."

Harry said, "You mean if Voldemort had killed me and escaped with the stone, he'd be really dead?"

Dumbledore smiled sadly. "Tonks, now you see why I didn't want to explain. No, Harry. In truth, I suspect he would've wriggled his way out of it. That's the game Voldemort and I have been playing these past 10 years. I create traps. Because he's an egotistical maniac who's long been obsessed with proving himself better than me, he's strongly tempted to walk into my traps. I must only offer decent bait and ensure that the trap is less than perfect. So long as he believes that he will _probably_ survive the trap, he'll walk into it. But to say that he will probably survive each individual trap is not to say that he'll survive a long string of them. Eventually, he will put a foot wrong, and one of those traps will get him. Intellectually, he knows this, but as I said, he's an egotistical maniac desperate to prove himself better than anyone else. At the very least, these contests eat into his limited resources and keep his time unproductively occupied."

Tonks said, "And you set this trap inside the school? Students could've died. The troll was him too, wasn't it? Harry almost died twice!"

Dumbledore said, "It would've only been once if you hadn't encouraged him to creep out of bed after curfew."

"Asshole!" Tonks was far too angry to worry about the fact that the man she was screaming at was Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, Chief Warlock of Britain, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards.

Harry said, "I killed Professor Quirrell."

Tonks anger fled, and her heart about broke. Harry didn't care about that. Harry was 11, and he'd just killed a man. Speaking of which, how had Harry killed him?

Dumbledore said, "No. You did not kill him. Quirrell was marked for death from the moment he allowed Voldemort to possess him. He could not long survive that possession, yet the ending of it would kill him. You may have injured Quirrell, but what killed him was Voldemort's spirit fleeing his body."

"I was trying to kill him," said Harry. He sounded very small as he said it, as if that were something he'd just realized and he didn't know whether it was good or bad.

"So was I," said Dumbledore. "I knew Voldemort had a new servant. Killing or capturing that servant was one of the goals of the trap."

Harry said, "I didn't really notice while it was happening, but my touched burned him. He came apart under my hands." He shivered.

"When your mother stood between you and him as you lay in your crib, and gave her life to extend yours one moment longer, she, intentionally or not, used magic of the oldest and most profound sort. The magic of self-sacrifice and love. That love continues on in you. In your skin. In your very blood. A protection against Voldemort, and, though to a lesser extent, against any who he might claim as one of his. Quirrell, possessed by Voldemort, could not abide it." He glanced at Tonks. "We have spoken briefly of what's required to maintain that protection."

Tonks thought of what little Dumbledore had said about the unusual protections Harry got from living with his Aunt and Uncle.

"The very strong reaction when your spells hit his, when your magic collided, is precisely the same. Voldemort is vulnerable to you Harry, in a way that he's not vulnerable to anyone else. But put that from your mind. Overall, the trap worked. He lost a servant, wasted years, and the school got an obstacle course out of the bargain. And though he wasn't a very good Defence Professor, we've had worse."

Tonks looked at him as if he were mad.

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "I confess myself grateful that he waited until after exams."

Tonks gaped. _Glad he waited until after exams_. As if the Defence Professor trying to kill a student was just a normal hazard. Regrettable, but unremarkable. And though the way he was smiling said it was joke, she wasn't sure he didn't actually mean it.

Tonks said, "Did you know Quirrell was working for Voldemort? That he had You-Know-Who living on the back of his head?"

Dumbledore shook his head sadly. "Of course not. I am hardly so foolish as that. To endanger my students like that? To endanger Harry like that? I knew Voldemort might come after the fake stone. I feared he might infiltrate as a staff member rather than sneak in undercover as darkness. I held some level of suspicion toward Quirrell, but I held some level of suspicion toward many."

Tonks wasn't sure whether to accept that story or not.

Dumbledore said, "Now, as to the cover story. To many students saw Quirrell there to cover it up entirely, but Severus prevented any other students from getting a good look at the back of Quirrell's head, so there will be no mention of Voldemort possessing him. Quirrell is, it turns out, a Voldemort sympathizer. I'm going to his quarters shortly to uncover evidence of that allegiance."

Dumbledore continued, "What happened is this. Harry was headed toward his assignation with you on the Astronomy Tower when Quirrell tried to kill him. With a dagger, for some ghoulish purpose, likely just a grisly revenge. The booms were the result of Harry instinctively using his wand to make the loudest sounds he could to draw help. You came, and all of the burns on Quirrell's body are the result of your fire spell, which was very impressive. While Quirrell was distracted by you, Harry tackled him, in quite a normal way with no strange magic involved, and you used the opportunity to stun and bind him. You don't know this yet, but it will become apparent to us after examining Quirrell's body that he died less due to the wounds you inflicted on him than due to a sickness he had contracted as a result of his own experiments with dark magic."

Dumbledore had them repeat the story back, and asked Harry especially a number of interrogative questions about the events, trying to trip him up.

Harry looked more and more worn, and just when Tonks was about to say something, Dumbledore stopped his questioning. "Harry could you wait just outside the door, on the stairs? I'd like to speak to Miss Tonks privately for a moment."

Tonks didn't want Harry out of her sight, but he would still be behind the gargoyle that covered the entrance to the Headmaster's chambers. Perfectly safe.

When Harry had closed the door, Dumbledore sighed. "He's going to have nightmares. Comfort him as best you can. And ensure that his friends, Ronald Weasley and Neville Longbottom don't poke fun at him for it. Young boys can be cruel without meaning to."

At that evidence of Dumbledore caring about his students, Tonks relaxed a little.

Dumbledore said, "I believe you called me by a rude name earlier."

Tonks blanched.

"You had every right to, considering the circumstances. I understand that you're upset about Harry's close scrape. It upsets me too. I am forced to keep many balls in the air, and at times, one falls. As Harry will be staying at your house for a month, I believe it's important that we have a strong relationship."

Tonks said, "Are you threatening to not let him come over during the summer?"

Dumbledore waved that aside. "That has already been agreed to. You would have to do a great deal more than call me names to alter that. I have been called a great many names, after all. You're in his corner. That's good. He needs people in his corner. I'm too occupied with the bigger picture to be there properly. I want you to stay in his corner, so long as you understand that his corner is on my side of the dueling ring."

Tonks nodded slowly, wondering if Dumbledore's use of a dueling metaphor implied anything.

"Amelia Bones and perhaps Minister Fudge should be by tomorrow or the day after. They'll want to speak to you. They get the truth. For everyone else, the cover story. If you have no further questions, I believe Harry will be eager to talk to you."

When they had left, Dumbledore took the fake Philosopher's Stone from his dustbin. He'd put a lot of effort into it, and it might be useful after he took the real one from its hiding place.

#

#

When Dumbledore read out the points totals, a storm of cheering and stamping broke out from the Slytherin table. Tonks could see The-Cousin-Who-Must-Not-Be-Abided banging his goblet on the table.

"Yes, yes, well done, Slytherin," said Dumbledore. "However, recent events must be taken into account.

The room went very still. The Slytherins' smiled faded a little.

"First, to Mr. Harry Potter, for his courage in tackling the man who had just been trying to kill him, I award 50 points."

Tonks saw Harry go red in the ears. She supposed he wasn't looking forward to having to retell the story yet again.

"And second, to Nymphadora Tonks, for her courage in confronting a Professor, and her skill in doing so, resulting in the saving of the life of a student, I award 100 points."

The hall exploded into applause, at the Hufflepuff table in particular. They had been a close second, and the math was dead easy.

"Which means," called Dumbledore over the storm of applause, for even Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were celebrating the downfall of Slytherin, "we need a little change of decoration."

He clapped his hands. In an instant, the green hangings become black and the silver became yellow; the huge Slytherin serpent vanished and a rugged Hufflepuff badger took its place.

Voice lost amid the uproar, Nymphadora Tonks shouted, "Hah! Suck, it Slytherin."

#

#

Tonks preferred a punk rocker style, but based on what Harry had said about his Aunt and Uncle, she'd made her hair black and transfigured for herself the sort of business suit young muggle women wore, black with clean lines and vertical white striping.

The man approaching Harry was fat and purple, face set in a permanent frown. She intercepted him directly.

"Hello, Mr. Dursley."

He shook her hand, wary but interested.

"I'm Tonks, Harry's cousin."

He drew his hand back, as if he'd been burned. "Cousin?!" He barked. "If he's got a cousin among you lot, why did he get dumped on us?"

Tonks smiled pleasantly. This was even worse than she'd thought. "A very distant cousin. For a number of reasons I'm sure you don't want to hear about, my family couldn't take custody, but that doesn't mean we don't feel responsibility. First, my family would like to host him for part of the summer. Perhaps starting on August the First."

"The sooner the better," Mr. Dursley growled.

"Excellent." Horrible, actually. "Also, I've told young Harry that if he doesn't owl me on the regular updating me on his progress on his summer homework, I'll have to stop by to make sure he's doing it."

A muscle in Mr. Dursley's cheek twitched. "Owl?" he growled.

"He'll send letters. With his owl. Don't worry. He'll only ever send and receive letters at night, and there's nothing more commonplace and invisible than an owl at night."

"He'll send you letters daily, if that's what it takes," Mr. Dursley said. "This homework... It won't be any freaky business, will it?"

Freaky business? Had the walrus of a man just referred to magic as 'freaky business?' She was tempted to hex him, but that would very stupid. "Written work only," said Tonks. "No spells."

Mr. Dursley grunted, and looked past her at Harry. He said, "Boy, we're leaving."

Tonks brought Harry in for a quick hug, and then Mr. Dursley was walking away, and Harry was pushing his trunk after him, the two disappearing in the station's crowd.

"August the First," Tonks said to herself.

:::

Whooo! End of year 1. Much of year two is already written.

Grimes is apparently not actually coming out with a new album this year, because "the music industry is trash," and I am very sad. That was going to be one of the highlights of my year.

I should have something up soon. Maybe an update to this or GoM, maybe a third-year oneshot.

If you'd like something to read in the meantime, please check out Monstrosity, by JLL on amazon. Look in the books department. The cover is my profile image. Fistfights between werewolves and a six-foot eight-inch athletic freak. It's only 99 cents.

I am aware that what Dumbledore said about Quirrell contradicts what he earlier thought about him. That's because he lies.


	6. Chapter 6: Tender Loving Care

**Tender Loving Care**

The stadium was small, and dim except for the stage. An auditorium with raised seating going all around, facing the fenced in, circular platform in the middle. The stadium was half-filled at best, but anyone listening to the crowd would judge it well past capacity. That might've been because of all the mead and beer, or it might've been because of subtle sonorous charm that ensured that while a match was on, the crowd would always roar.

Two combatants moved about the circular stage, exchanging Stunning and Disarming Spells, advanced transfigurations, and schoolyard hexes and jinxes cast at a level schoolyards had seldom seen.

Nothing dark. No Blasting Curses. This was Cadmyr, a proper, ancient and respectable establishment. Wards on the stage preventing anything deadly or truly injurious, and before a duelist entered the ring, they had to accept those constraints.

Tonks had heard of another dueling club that wasn't so conscientious, but she didn't intend to ever step foot in it except perhaps as an Auror looking for a perp.

Tonks dove, rattled off three hexes in rapid succession, shielded, countered, banished a conjured panther, and followed Stupefy with a swarm of conjured bees.

Her opponent sent a billow of flame at the bees, and Tonks responded with stream of hot water, and she pushed the resulting steam at her opponent.

He yelped, leapt away, already shielding, saw that his opponent was looking the wrong way, unshielded to take advantage, and saw a fraction of a second too late the real Tonks standing in a corner.

He hit the ground, stunned, and Tonks let the illusion of herself fail. The crowd roared, and Tonks whooped and raised a hand in acknowledgment, a huge grin crossing her face while the spotsman rennervated the loser.

You weren't allowed to disillusion and you weren't allowed to use obscuring charms, seeing as both were bad for the fan experience, but she'd seen the steam loophole before, and the instant her opponents vision had been blocked by it, she'd dashed aside and put up the mirage.

It was her second fight of the day, and it moved her record to three and five. Her first victory over a regular.

She stayed for the next match. Ella Montrain vs Remus Lupin. She was almost sure she'd met Remus Lupin before, but she couldn't remember when, where or why, and she had a feeling his name hadn't been Remus Lupin.

Probably nothing, but he was rather good, better than her. As a hopeful Auror, she ought to an eye on skilled duelists who might be using aliases.

After Lupin had caught Ella in a Petrifying Curse that had _curved,_ she collected her winnings at the window. A grand total of two galleons and 7 sickles. For prize money, the semi-pro dueling circuit was a long, long way from professional Quidditch.

She apparated back to her parents house, collapsed onto the couch, then forced herself to get up and take a shower. It had been a long day. She'd trained and studied for hours, gone to the Club, trained more seriously on the dummies, doing the same spells again and again to make them faster, stronger, more natural. Then she'd dueled. And that was after spending two hours in the morning at a muggle Mixed Martial Arts studio.

What the muggles taught would probably never be useful in and of itself, but it would improve her fitness, and hopefully it would decrease her damnable clumsiness, not that the dance lessons her mother had forced her through as a kid had helped with that.

Her mother. Best not to let her hear about the semi-pro dueling. Not that she'd object. Oh no. It was much worse than that. She'd come to watch, watercress sandwiches in a picnic basket, and she'd insist that Tonks "comport herself with class."

The Aurors wouldn't even review her application until they'd gotten her NEWT results, which meant she wouldn't find out if she was accepted until mid-September at the earliest. Her plan had been to use the summer to relax and go to too many parties and muggle concerts, but whenever she closed her eyes she saw Quirrell standing over her, wand raised, an instant from killing her.

It had made her wonder if she really wanted to be an Auror, and she'd decided that she did, but the idea of dying on the job had become a lot realer.

It was only 10 days since graduation, and so far, the desperate need to get stronger hadn't faded.

She checked her desk, then her mail slot in the kitchen. No letters from Harry. She'd gotten one the second day, one the third, and one on the fifth, but none since. It was starting to concern her.

She resolved to check the next morning, after the Mixed Martial Arts.

#

#

Fresh from breakfast, Harry set a glass vial of amber fluid on his beat-up desk, next to a glass of water. He downed the vial, made a face, and chased it with water.

The vial was a mixture of vitamins, nutrients, and a potion which was supposed to ensure his body reached its full potential. According to Tonks, it was in some of the foodstuffs at Hogwarts. Pumpkin juice was a Hogwarts staple partly because the potion mixed so well into it. But most people didn't bother taking it outside of Hogwarts. Nine or ten months a year was plenty.

Tonks had gone to Madam Pomfrey and gotten him one vial for every day of break. The concentrated form didn't taste like anything he'd want to put in his pumpkin juice, but there was a little sweetener, and Harry supposed it was extra energy.

He hadn't been back long, but Harry was already worrying about hunger, a sensation that had become largely foreign at Hogwarts, but was an old hat at the Dursleys. Not that they starved him exactly, but snacks were disallowed and second helping were frowned upon, so he often enough had an ache in his stomach by the next meal-time, and that was without his having to skip a meal, a common punishment.

Wary of that, he'd brought home food with him from the train and the Hogwarts kitchen. Piled in his trunk, it had seemed a goodly supply, but after 10 days it was only so many wrappers in a dustbin.

On the fifth night at the Dursleys, he'd gotten a care package from Tonks, but that didn't have more than two days left in it. He'd started rationing his snacks, and was wishing he'd done so from the start rather than just tearing into them when he felt like it.

He hoped there would be another care package from Tonks. He'd mentioned how much he'd liked it in his last three letters, and hadn't gotten a letter back. It had been almost a week since the last letter, and he knew she was busy, and he wasn't a little kid who needed constant attention, but he'd liked how there'd been three letters in the first five days, even if the first one had been just a quick _"Are you home alright and they're treating you well?"_

A voice from below said, "Boy, see about that garden!" and Harry sighed. Not that he really minded gardening. It was nearly nice, half the time. The least objectionable of all his chores. Worlds better than vacuuming. He thought it had done a little to prepare him for Herbology, and now that he was gardening again, his mind kept naturally wandering back to what he'd learned in Herbology. He'd even, when especially bored, gone back over parts of his Herbology book to refresh his mind on some part of another that had gotten fuzzy.

He was in the garden, kneeling on the dirt next to a bucket half-full of weeds, adding another weed to it, when a familiar and welcome voice said, "Hard at work, I see."

"Tonks!" he said, leaping to his feet, and goggling a little at how she she looked. Ripped blue-jeans, a low-cut pink top that showed a bit of cleavage he hardly saw, owing to being short, a black trench coat, short pink hair, and a nose ring.

Harry said, "Uncle Vernon will flip when he sees you like that."

She smiled and said, "As much as I might enjoy that, perhaps I should avoid it." She stepped inside the garden, knelt behind a bush so she'd be out of sight, and waved her wand at herself.

Her top turned blue and its hemline rose. The holes in her jeans disappeared, the trench coat looked a little less... grungy, though Harry couldn't have pointed out what specifically she'd changed. Metamorphmagery shifted her hair to a strong red that could just barely be plausible as natural. But the nose ring remained.

"It's good to see you," said Harry.

Tonks, standing, raised an eyebrow. "If you've been missing me, you should answer my letters."

"I have. You're the one who hasn't answered mine."

Tonks' mouth quirked. "I haven't heard from you in about 6 days."

Harry said, "I sent a letter two nights ago. I haven't gotten any letters from you in about six days."

Tonks looked confused and scratched her head. "I can imagine a reason why you might not get my letters. There's a mail ward on you. Otherwise you'd get loads of fanmail, and worse. Dumbledore whitelisted me, but it could've gone wrong. But I should still be able to get mail from you."

"My friends can't get mail to me?"

"They should be whitelisted too. Dumbledore said he whitelisted most of Gryffindor, and most of the Puffs and Claws in your year too."

She cast a series of spells, using incantations for most of them, and at the end blinked as she saw something Harry couldn't. "There's a lot of wards around your house. A hell of a lot." She inclined her wand to the right. "And that one ward is something else. Damn. Can't say I know a lot about wards, though. I can reveal them, but as for making sense of them... I'll owl Dumbledore."

She shrugged. "So, sprog, what's up?"

"I'm fine. It's like normal. I really appreciated the care package. A lot. I do chores. I've started on my homework, a little." He didn't have much else to do with his free time other than walking the neighborhood and laying in bed thinking of Hogwarts, and he'd done both of those plenty, but they got old.

"And your metamorphmagic practice?"

He winced. "I've done it some. But I like to have a mirror, and I don't have a mirror in my room, and I can't be in the loo for long or Dudley wants to use it and gets upset."

More importantly, he wasn't like Tonks, who could go back and forth in an instant. He needed time to make changes, and if he turned his hair blue and Aunt Petunia told him to come down and take out the rubbish, he'd either have to refuse to do so for twenty minutes or come down with his hair blue. Neither would go over well."

Tonks said, "Tell you what, we'll work on it together, and we'll skip seeing that horrible Uncle of yours. Which room is yours?"

He led her to the side of the yard, among the petunias, and pointed to his window.

"Go up to your room in a few minutes." She cast another spell on herself, "so I won't make much noise," crouched so she couldn't be seen from the street, and disappeared with a soft pop no louder than he could make with his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

Harry hurried through the weeding, dumped the weeds in the garden bin, wiped his hands on his pants, and hurried up to his room.

When he entered, Tonks was sitting on his bed, and his room was different.

Dudley's old soda stains were out of the carpet, and just about every object in the room looked to have had the Mending Charm cast on it. The desk had lost its scratches and dents, the hole in the drywall was gone, the white dresser looked newly painted, and when he sat in his wood desk chair, it didn't wobble.

Tonks said, "Your mattress is almost like new, too. And I made other changes. If anyone but you or I tries to open the door, the door knob will jam for about two seconds. Plenty of time to hastily cover up whatever you don't want them to see. Just before I turned eight, Siriu-someone did the same to my knob, and I didn't care much then, but by the time I was your age, it was coming in handy. I've also muffled the sounds. You'll still hear them just fine, but so long as your door's closed, noise coming from your room will be a lot quieter. If it's not too loud you ought to be able to listen to your music without them hearing a note."

Harry said, "I don't have any music."

Tonks pointed to a combination clock, radio, and cassette player on the dresser. It had been Dudley's until Dudley had broken it, and instead of being thrown out, it had been tossed in his spare room, and while Harry had tossed much of Dudley's junk, he wasn't comfortable tossing something as large and memorable as that.

Tonks said, "I fixed it. And charmed it too, so you shouldn't have to plug it in." She pressed the ON button, and the sound of static filled the room. "Now what's a good muggle radio station in Surrey?" she said, fiddling with the dial, settling eventually at fast, slightly screechy guitar music.

"The Ramones," Tonks said with a satisfied nod. She waved her wand at him, and he had an odd feeling like thousands of tiny squeegees were going over him at once. When it was over, all the dirt of the garden was gone. from and from his clothes, and the yellow mustard stain on his shirt was missing too.

Tonks said, "Your muggle clothes really aren't much good, are they?"

"These are my gardening clothes," Harry said. "They're supposed to be bad."

Tonks said, "I didn't see you in muggle clothes often at Hogwarts, but when I did, they weren't much good." Without asking, she opened the top drawer to his and set his socks and underwear on his desk.

"Beh-bleh," stammered Harry.

"They're holey," she said. She held up a particularly offensive example. "A tattered cloth, practically." She compared it to his waist. "And it's way too big."

"It was Dudley's," Harry explained.

Tonks stared at him. "Hand-me-down pants and shirts are on thing, but hand-me-down underwear?"

Harry felt very small. "Socks too," he said.

Tonks glared at the door and those beyond, and swept all his socks and underwear into the rubbish. "I'll get you new ones," she said, and started opening the other drawers, pulling out shirts, shorts, pants and jackets. "These will do for now, after I've mended, cleaned, and resized them."

Harry, who had a sudden vision of his Aunt and Uncle wanting to know how in the blazes he'd got a wardrobe that fit, said, "Keep them baggy. I like my clothing baggy. It lets in the air, and the pockets are bigger."

She nodded, and cast her spells. Stains and holes disappeared, clothing shrunk, and by the end of it, the clothing looked better, but not great, and it was still baggy, just not as baggy, so hopefully his relatives wouldn't notice. It wasn't as if they looked at him very much.

A little notebook and a quill appeared out of her pocket, and deposited themselves on his desk. The notebook opened to a blank page, and the quill hovered over it.

Tonks said, "Socks, underwear. A wizarding radio. A hanging wall mirror." The quill dutifully recorded the items as she mentioned them. "Anything else?"

"Er, the care package was nice."

"You keep mentioning that. They do feed you, don't they?"

"They do, but I told you that I can't snack much. And Aunt Petunia isn't a very good cook." She wasn't bad, actually, but it was a good reason.

"Food," said Tonks, and the quill scratched at the parchment. "Anything else? Books? Markers? Toys?"

"No. Thank you."

Tonks took the notebook and quill off the desk, cast the spell she'd cast on herself just before she'd vanished with a pop, and vanished again with another pop.

While she was gone, Harry put his newly improved clothing away, and took off his shoes, which were were falling apart, the soles disconnecting from the sides and slapping the ground as he walked, as if he were wearing flip-flops, becoming so bad he'd actually been considering asking his Aunt and Uncle about them, which was a shame, because his feet had finally grown enough that the shoes nearly fit.

There was nothing he'd rather see fixed.

He lay on his bed, and didn't feel the springs poking into him, or the concave depression formed by his body. And the sheets didn't have any holes either.

Lying on his normal, respectable bed, in his normal respectable room, filled with normal, respectable clothing, all due to Tonks, he felt a strange pressure in his chest and eyes. A feeling he'd never felt before, and though he hadn't cried in years, he wondered if he would.

His eyes grew wet, but not wet enough for tears to fall, and before long they dried.

Wanting to appear industrious when she returned, he opened his potions book to a random page, read a little, set it aside, but still open on his bed, and slowly turned his left thumbnail black.

Little more than an hour had passed when Tonks returned with another pop. She took 13 items from her pockets and unshrunk them. A box of 32 granola bars, a large bag of mixed nuts, a jar of peanut butter, a large bag of dried peaches, a brass wizarding radio, three packs of underwear, three packs of cotton socks, a pack of thick wool socks, and a wall mirror.

With a moment of wand work, Tonks hung the mirror on the empty space next to his desk, directly across from his bed.

She looked at his hand and tapped his black nail. "You're a lot better at small fundamental changes than at large superficial ones. That has it pluses. You're almost ready to start on your eyes. Do you have anything I could transfigure?"

Harry took one of Dudley's action figures from the closet. He-Man, only he was missing a head and an arm. With a tap of her wand, she transformed it into a model of an eye, and pointed to the cornea and the lens, and explained how the light needed to focus on the retina. "So all you really have to do is adjust the shape of your eye until everything is clear without glasses. Does that make sense?"

"I guess."

"I don't want you experimenting without supervision, but think about it, and practice your other exercises. We'll do it together later."

They talked and talked, Tonks explaining muggle punk rock to him and showing him how to use the wizarding radio. At his request, she fixed his shoes, and he dug out his chess board, which he had played a few times over the summer just against the board, even though the pieces were very gullible and could be talked around into making bad choices, and he narrowly lost a game to her.

His stomach rumbled, and Tonks laughingly said it was time for lunch and asked him if he'd like to go anywhere.

Harry put his shoes on, and Tonks said, "Grip me firmly. We're going to apparate."

He took a strong hold of her left arm, and Tonks turned on her heel.

He felt as if he were being squeezed through a long, black tube that was being spun around as he went through it.

He fell to his knees in a dim alley, between a power box and a pillar. "Apparition point," Tonks said. "Muggles can't notice it. Bit similar to the barrier at Kings Cross."

He stood up, and swayed his feet.

"I know, it's horrible at first, but eventually you'll hardly notice it. And that's only the second time I side-alonged anyone after getting my license, so I'm sure I'll get better at it. How's your stomach? Think it'll all stay down?"

He nodded, his nauseousness rapidly receding.

She led him out into the plaza, a place full of restaurants and shops, and Tonks choose a restaurant that wasn't a pub but had a pub sort of feel. Harry choose the fish and chips, because he knew it was practically the national food, but he'd hardly ever had it. Aunt Petunia didn't make it, and the Dursleys never took him out to eat if they could help it.

The fish was good, and so were the chips, but Harry thought the pickles that'd come on the side were his favorite part.

Tonks handled the muggle money with complete confidence, and when they'd finished lunch they walked around the center for a few minutes, so his stomach would be 'settled,' and then went around to the alley with the apparition point. He grabbed her arm, and with a pop, they apparated back to his room.

It really was better the second time, but not much.

"How's your stomach?"

"It's alright." The nauseousness and dizziness were fading quicker than the last time.

Tonks hugged him goodbye, promised to talk to Dumbledore and work out what was wrong with his mail, and with a final pop, she was gone, leaving Harry to consider one of the better days of his life.

He felt... loved. He'd never felt that way before. Liked, yes, Hermione, Ron, Neville and Hagrid all liked him, but this being taken care of was more than that.

He'd better hide the evidence of it from his relatives. The model of an eye could go in his desk, and could be explained as something he'd found abandoned at school and taken because he felt like it. The wizarding radio could passed off as one of Dudley's old things, even to Dudley, who'd owned too much to keep track of it all, but he hid the food in his closet, inside his old backpack.

:::

I like some punk (Sleater-Kinney, Girlpool's self-titled EP, a few others) but I'm not generally a big fan of the genre. Tonks is, maybe.

I think the school year in second-year will be fairly abbreviated, but the summer will be long.

There should be more GoM soon.

Pretty please check out my original novel on Amazon. Monstrosity, by JLL. It's only 99 cents. The vampires, werewolves and witches are all fighting over what an old tree has, and there's a very Slytherin human boy stuck in the middle of it.


	7. Chapter 7: Dr Pepper

**Chapter 7: Dr. Pepper**

Harry lay on the floor, listening to the wireless. As the narrator spoke of Brackburr Castle, he saw it rising high above the moor, black and gloomy, Godric and Helga crouched amid the brush, Helga examining the wards as Godric memorized the guard's circuit.

He had found a station that played only history. First a brief explanation of the historical facts, then a long storyification of them, and finally a breakdown of what was a historical fact, what was conjecture, and what was artistic license.

The wizarding wireless was different than a radio. It had euphonics. When he imagined what the narrator said, it was more than just his imagination that made the picture. The danger of the moment, the prickle of the bracken, the look of the vista, came into his mind with unnatural vividness. When he listened to Quidditch matches, he saw the swoop of the broom, felt the plunge in his stomach, and smelled the fresh-cut grass.

Harry thought it was better than a muggle telly by a big margin.

Absently, as he listened to the tale of Godric and Helga slipping in the castle through the waste outflow, he heard Uncle Vernon announce he was heading to the office, even though it was Saturday.

A minute later, as Helga put the whole lower floor to sleep with a single spell played on her lyre, Dudley shouted that he was going to Piers', and the door slammed.

Godric was nobly befriending Wycliffe's feral, chained wyvern when Aunt Petunia shrieked that she was running errands, and the door slammed again.

Harry thought it a little odd that his relatives had all left within five minutes of each other, and he wasn't completely surprised when the doorbell rang.

Harry silenced the wireless, regretful that he might not get to hear the rest of the story even though he knew pretty well how it ended, and went downstairs to the front door. Looking through the peephole, he saw Dumbledore and Tonks.

Harry opened the door. Tonks looked about how she had the other day, but Dumbledore was wearing sneakers, baggie jeans, a T-shirt, and a blue hoodie. Youth clothing that looked odd on an old with a long white beard.

Dumbledore said, "Harry, my dear boy, how has your summer been?"

"It's alright. How'd you make my relatives leave?"

"Muggle repelling ward. Makes them think of other places to be. They won't be back until he take it down. Now, if we could get to business. Harry, if you'd lead us to the hearth?"

Harry let them in and took them to the fireplace, which was in the dining room and had bricks painted white. Dumbledore examined it, muttering. Eventually he said, "They don't light fires, do they?"

"Not often." A couple times, during holidays.

Dumbledore hmmed and moved around the house, looking, and he stopped eventually in front of the telly. He nodded and said, "This is it, this dark, convex mirror."

"The telly," said Harry.

Dumbledore looked surprised. "It's a telly? It doesn't look how they used to. They were smaller, much like kaleidoscopes. Whatever it is, it is the center of attention the household gathers around."

Tonks gestured with her chin toward Dumbledore and rolled her eyes. Harry smiled, and Dumbledore moved his wand in small circles in front of the telly.

"My mail wards look to be functioning properly. And, oh, hmm."

Harry said, "What is it?"

"There's a mail redirection ward that isn't mine, and it's of a very odd sort." He kept frowning, his wand moving almost knitting the air. After a minute, his face broke into a bemused smile. "It's elf magic. I fancy I know as much about elf magic as anyone in Britain, which isn't much, admittedly, and whatever elf did this is unusually skilled."

Tonks said, "How come your 'world's greatest warding system super-blood-magic super-duper-protections' can be messed with by a house-elf?"

Dumbledore said, "Because countermeasures are hardly ever taken against house-elves. The nature of their bonds largely prevent them from being used for nefarious purposes, and beyond that, it just isn't done. The issue of taking countermeasures against them slipped my mind."

"Can you break its magic?"

"Of course." He looked at Harry, wondering how the boy would respond to finding out who was responsible. "However, I'd rather catch the elf responsible. Easy enough. I'll trip the foreign ward, indicating mail has been redirected. The house-elf will apparate to the redirection location, but it will find me instead of mail."

He motioned with his wand as if plucking a string, and disappeared with a soft pop.

Harry said, "How long do you think until he's back?"

"No idea. Do you have anything to drink? I'm parched."

"Tea?"

"How about Dr. Pepper?"

There was Dr. Pepper in the fridge. Dudley liked it, but Harry wasn't allowed to drink any. He figured Dudley wouldn't notice if Harry took some just this once.

He was re-entering the lounge, holding a foaming plastic cup of Dr. Pepper, when Dumbledore popped back into existence, holding with his left arm onto a knee-high creature like a hairless, wingless bat.

Harry jerked, but compensated with his wrist just enough to keep the Dr. Pepper from sloshing out of the cup.

The creature was looking at Dumbledore with an expression of horror, and its tennis ball-sized eyes widened as it took in Harry. There was a slight pop, and it shimmered for a moment, then moaned.

Dumbledore said, "Jinxes and wards can be raised even against house-elf apparition. What is your name, house-elf?"

The house-elf frantically shook its head.

Dumbledore said, in a ponderous, formal way, "This good citizen wishes to know your name."

As if the words were being dragged out of it by pliers, the house-elf said, "This house-elf is Dobby."

Dumbledore smiled. "This good citizen wishes to know your business in placing a mail ward on this house, Dobby."

Trembling from its attempts to keep itself from talking, it said, "Dobby is, Dobby is, Dobby is saving Harry Potter!"

Harry looked at Tonks and saw confusion as great as his. But he did know that he didn't like how Dumbledore was questioning it, forcing the answers out of it. It looked frightened.

Harry knelt, putting himself eye-level with the creature. He said, "Er, it's okay, Dobby. No one's going to hurt you. Would you like something to drink?" He extended the cup of Dr. Pepper.

To his surprise, Dobby burst into tears and threw itself onto the ground before Harry, Dumbledore letting go of its arm.

"Harry Potter is great! Harry Potter is good! Dobby has never been offered beverage by a wizard!"

Harry looked from Tonks to Dumbledore, wondering if this behavior were normal. From their expressions, he guessed it wasn't too odd.

"Here, drink." He pushed the cup into the house-elf's hands.

Dobby took the cup, gazing into as the cup if it held all the secrets of the universe, and took a slow sip.

Surprise crossed its face, and it said, "Bubbly like champagne. But sweet." It took another swallow. "Dobby is wanting to know what this is."

"It's called Dr. Pepper."

"Dobby is liking Dr. Pepper!" The house-elf took another swallow, and Harry moved so his body would block its view of Dumbledore and Tonks.

Harry said, "Why were you blocking my mail?"

"Harry Potter must not return to Hogwarts!"

Harry took a moment to process that. "I'm going back to Hogwarts."

"Harry Potter must not. It is not safe." The house-elf seemed to have almost forgotten about Dumbledore and Tonks, eyes fixed on Harry with feverish focus. "If Harry Potter goes back to Hogwarts, he will be in mortal danger. There is a plot to make horrible things happen at Hogwarts. Dobby has known it for weeks. Harry Potter must not put himself in danger. He is too important!"

"What terrible things? Who's plotting them?"

Dobby made a funny choking noise and banged its head on the rug, though Harry couldn't help noticing the hand holding the Dr. Pepper was still. "Dobby must not say!"

There was a sort of pressure on Harry's back, and he knew that Dumbledore didn't want to interrupt, that Dumbledore thought Harry had 'established good rapport,' but there was a question Dumbledore wanted him to ask.

A little more pressure, and Harry knew what the question was.

Harry said, "Is the plot one of your master's secrets?"

Dobby raised its head slowly, then nodded it.

Harry said, "I don't know why you thought blocking my mail would keep me from going to Hogwarts."

"Harry Potter would think his friends from Hogwarts did not care, and Harry Potter would not receive his class list or his start of term notice."

Harry didn't think that would do any good, since apparently Dumbledore himself managed the wards around his house, but he didn't say so. He said, "Does this plot have anything to do with Voldemort?"

Dobby took a desperate gulp of Dr. Pepper and said, "Ah, speak not the name, sir! Speak not the name!"

"Er, sorry. Does it have to do with You-Know-Who? You could jut nod or shake your head."

Slowly, Dobby shook his head. "Not, not _He-Who-Must-Not-_ _Be-_ _Named_."

Harry said, "Tell me more about this plot."

"Dobby can't."

Dumbledore stepped forward. "Harry will return to Hogwarts. I will see to it myself, if need be. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. Your trying will only be an annoying distraction. If you wish to protect him, you must tell me about this _plot_."

"Dobby cannot."

Dumbledore said, "This good citizen wishes to know your master's name."

"Dobby must not say."

"Is Mulciber your master?"

Dobby's tennis-ball eyes widened.

"Nott? Avery? Parkinson? Rookwood? Carrow? Malfoy?"

Dobby twitched.

"Ah, your master is Lucius Malfoy."

Dobby shrieked and disappeared with a loud, crackling pop, the cup of Dr. Pepper tipping over.

Dumbledore blinked. "He broke my house-elf anti-apparition jinx. What a remarkable house-elf."

Tonks said, "Damn Relatives-Who-Cannot-Be-Abided."

Harry said, "What are we going to do?"

"You are going to do nothing other than send me an owl if Dobby approaches you again, or if you, by happenstance, overhear anything that may be relevant. Otherwise, your job is to do well in school. Leave Lucius Malfoy to me."

"But-"

"The house-elf may think it's a very grave matter indeed, but they are excitable creatures. More likely, young Mr. Malfoy was telling his father he'd 'crush you,' and the house-elf overheard and took it literally."

Harry looked to Tonks and saw she was nodding, if with reservation.

"Nonetheless, I will be keeping a very close eye on the Malfoy family, and I'll be considering new security measures for Hogwarts, after I place new security measures on this house."

Harry said, "That's fine, but could someone please vanish the Dr. Pepper out of the rug?"

#

#

On July 31st, Harry lay on his bed, disappointed, and mad at himself for being so. He had presents from Hermione, Ron and Neville. He should be thinking it was the best birthday of his life, except for just possibly the last one.

But Tonks had said she would come and it was nine at night and she still hadn't come, and with every tick of the clock he was more convinced she'd forgot.

Probably she'd had something to do. She had a busy life. Dueling, martial arts, parties. Friends here age. Getting ready for the Auror Academy. She couldn't be expected to visit a distant cousin just because it was his birthday. And what she'd already done for him was far beyond what he deserved.

He let Hedwig out the window, and, though still in his day clothes, he turned out the light, lay back on his bed, and fell into a dissatisfied doze.

A popping sound woke him from it.

"You decent under there?"

"Er."

Tonks' wand lit, and she was in her usual trenchcoated garb, a brown paper package with a red bow clutched loosely under one arm.

Harry glanced at the clock radio. 11:03. At night. "You came."

"Said I would. And I got you a cake. Might be squashed a little." She pulled a box from a pocket the box clearly should not have fit in and set it on Harry's desk.

He rolled out of bed, thankful he'd never taken his clothes off except to slip off his shoes. Her coming at such an inappropriately late time was cool, almost.

She opened the cake box, and the cake was black with 'Happy Birthday' written on it in yellow frosting. When she served him a slice, it proved to be made of layers of yellow and black.

Harry said, "Hufflepuff colors?"

"Lemon and chocolate. Your favorites."

"But not usually together." He took a bite, using dining ware she'd conjured, let the cake melt in his mouth, and said, "It works this time though."

They busied themselves with cake, until Harry said, "Why'd you come so late?"

"You remember I said you'd come to my house August first? I thought we'd take that literally. The moment the clock turns to 12:01, we'll leave. Unless you'd rather not."

"No. The sooner the better. This is great. This is really cool, actually. Leaving in the middle of the night. I'll leave my relatives a note."

"Oh. I didn't even think about that. Will they worry?"

"No." Even with as much as she'd seen and as much as he'd told her, Tonks still didn't get it about the Dursleys. "They'll be happy I'm gone." He cast an eye at the unopened present, but said, "I'll pack."

She helped him pack. He'd acquired enough things that he'd worried it wouldn't all fit in the trunk, but once they'd put everything in, the trunk seemed to have as much room left as it had when he'd packed it for his first year at Hogwarts. Trying to see how it all fit in so easily made him dizzy.

When Harry put the wireless in, he wrapped it in a blanket and surrounded it with clothes so it wouldn't get damaged.

Tonks set the present on his bed and motioned at it.

Harry picked it up, and was flummoxed by the brown wrapping paper. There wasn't any tape or string. It held together by virtue of folds and creases. Harry figured there had to be a paper folding charm. He couldn't imagine Tonks doing it by hand.

Harry pulled gently at one corner, carefully undoing a crease.

Tonks said, "You can just rip it."

Harry ripped it, revealing a slim box of thin grey cardboard. He opened that and found a black coat, which unfurled into a trenchcoat a great deal like Tonks', only his size.

Tonks said, "The lining is acromantula silk. It'll keep you warm in the cold and cool in the heat, and it's slim enough to fit under robes. The pockets are expanded. Put it on."

It fit perfectly, reaching to the top of his socks, and the lining was the softest, smoothest thing he'd ever touched.

He showered her in thanks before saying, "Acromantula silk?"

"Silk from ruddy big talking spiders. There's a colony that provides oodles of the stuff in return for flocks of chickens. You'll see the rest of your present when we get home."

"The rest? I wasn't even expecting anything. The wireless and the clothes and the food were more than enough already."

"Too late to object. It's already been bought."

He tried to remember when her birthday was. It was one of the very first things he'd known about her, seen in the book at Hogwarts on family trees. It almost must've passed since they'd met. "You were born in November?"

"November 19th."

She hadn't mentioned her birthday during the year, but he should've remembered. He had to do something nice for her next birthday He should be able to, since had had so much money in his vault.

They searched the room for any thing he might have missed, and Harry crept out to the loo to fetch his scant toiletries. He wrote a note to the Dursleys, set it on his desk, and put on his shoes. Tonks closed the trunk and shrunk it so it was so small he could hold it comfortably in one hand.

The clock had struck midnight, but Harry had one concern. "What about Hedwig?"

"She'll find you." Tonks presented her arm saying, "Shall we?"

Harry took a tight hold. Tonks turned on her heel and they vanished with a crack.

:::

I don't think of it as canon, but I enjoyed the Cursed Child. I think _one_ of the reasons some people hate it is they're not used to reading scripts. There's a knack to reading and enjoying scripts, and college made me develop it.

Delphini Riddle is a sad character. She's _raised_ to be a villain. I am upset that, in a play about time travel, the play did not end with someone going back in time, taking her from Rowle as an infant, and setting her on Harry's doorstep with a note. So I am thinking of letting her into this story. All it takes is for her birth to be at the end of the first war instead of the second.

That would move the focus _somewhat_ away from the original 'Mentordora Tonks' idea, but the story is already too close to Geek of Magic. Adding her would move it in unknown directions. But mostly I want to do it because I've been wanting a story where Harry and Delphi go to Hogwarts together but I don't want to start a new story.


	8. Chapter 8: Bread and Salt

**Bread and Salt**

Tonks and Harry appeared in a large turf clearing set amid tall trees, the space dimly lit by stars and a crescent moon. He heard crickets, hooting owls, and the murmuring of a stream.

At the center of the clearing was a garden, and at the center of the garden, a house. One story, with what he thought might be an attic window, though it was hard to tell in the dark. Gold light shone through the blinds of a first-story window.

Harry had known from the beginning that staying with Tonks would mean staying with Tonks' parents, but it had not until that moment felt real, and all at once he was nervous.

Without any deference to that, Tonks walked up to the side door, and opened it, Harry following her into a large, bright, tiled kitchen with a large stove, a center island, and a round wooden table.

A man and a woman were sitting at the table, the woman's hair black, the man's light brown. Harry thought they looked a few years younger than Vernon and Petunia, but he knew they were older, so Harry figured it had to be that they were fitter, or that magicals aged more slowly. He'd heard Dumbledore was nearly a hundred and fifty.

Tonks said, "Mum, You didn't have to stay up."

"And miss our little nephew's arrival?" She stood very straight, the firm set of her jaw reminding him of Professor McGonagall. She examined him with unsettling intensity and said, "You must grow tired of hearing it, but you do look very much like your father. Call me Andromeda. This is Ted. Sit."

Harry took a seat at the kitchen table. Ted gave Harry a look that seemed to say, 'Yes, I know, right? Just go with it.'

Andromeda waved her wand, and dining ware appeared before Harry. Two plates, one small, three forks nestled on a napkin, a knife and a spoon.

Four earthen bowls, an iron skillet and a wicker basket floated from the counter to the kitchen table.

Tonks said, "It's past midnight. He needs a bed, not a meal."

Andromeda said, "He's a twelve-year-old boy. He would eat a five course meal once every four hours if it were offered, and go for snacks an hour later."

Harry would've objected that that was Dudley, but even though he'd just had over half of a cake probably intended for four, the mushroom mix in one bowl smelled heavenly and his stomach growled.

"See," said Andromeda. "Besides, it does not do to delay breaking bread and taking salt."

Harry's eyes turned to the wicker basket, which held a loaf of fresh bread. Andromeda said, "We would normally buy our bread, but we raised a small stand of wheat to produce this."

She pointed to the bowl that held salad. "Root and leaf. The tomatoes are fruit, as are the nuts." The next bowl held cooked mushrooms and cheese. "Mushroom of our yard and cheese of our goat. Fungus and product of animal." She pointed to the skillet of broiled fish. "Fish of our pond," she said.

Harry was realizing that everything they were eating had been produced on the Tonks' own land, and there was a reason for that, a meaning to it. He wasn't sure if he should ask, but there was an odd formalism even to the earthen bowls.

Andromeda said, "Long ago, magic was based wholly on intent. There were no spells, no incantations, no foci except perhaps a long stick you'd grown used to holding. The first spells as we think of them now were made to regularize the production of certain important effects. The creation of fire was assuredly first."

She pointed to the smallest of the earthen bowls, which was smaller than a teacup and held white grains. "You cannot live without this. Wars have been fought over it, cities and fortunes founded on its production, famines brought on by its lack. Salt, more even than gold, was the universal currency, the origin of the word 'salary.' For the ancient tribal societies that spread across the globe long before muggles and magical split, long before even agriculture, it was the responsibility of the shaman to ensure a good supply of salt. And so it may be that spells to acquire salt were the second class to be formalized, after those to make fire.

"It is cheap now, commonplace. The muggles excavate it in such great quantities that even we find it easier to buy it from them. But this salt," Andromeda pointed to the bowl, "was taken from the earth beneath this house."

She snapped her fingers next to the wick of the unlit candle at the center of the table, and the candle lit.

Andromeda said, "As Matron, I will serve myself first."

She broke a hunk off the loaf of bread and set it on her plate. She split it with her knife, and, with two fingers and her thumb, pinched a good bit of salt from the small bowl and sprinkled it on the bread. With a spoon, she scooped a serving of the mix of mushrooms and cheese onto the bread. Then she took a little salad and a broiled fish.

Ted did the exact same, and then Tonks. Andromeda said, "Guest of the house, we invite you to eat with us."

Tonks said, "Do you have to be so painfully traditional?"

Andromeda arched an eyebrow at her daughter.

Figuring he was the guest, Harry took food, doing everything just as they had done it. When he had served himself, he felt as if he should say something, so he said, "Thank you very much."

Andromeda seemed amused by the reply. Ted picked up the final bowl, which had a wrinkle in its edge like a spout, and poured a red pulpy liquid into Andromeda's goblet, into Tonks', into Harry's, and finally into his own goblet.

Andromeda said, "Bowl wine, of a primitive sort, made from grapes of our garden. Primeval, you might say."

She picked up her goblet, as did Tonks and Ted, so Harry picked up his goblet too.

Harry said, "I'm not supposed to drink wine."

Andromeda said, "It's grape juice that's gone a bit bad, barely alcoholic at all. A votre santé."

As if that were a signal, the three adults drank, and Harry drank too a moment later, face twisting at the taste.

They joined hands, Harry nervously put one hand in Tonk's and the other in Ted's, and Andromeda said several sentences in Latin, starting with, "Magicae custodiat nos."

After that, they began to eat. Harry thought the bread with mushroom stuff on it looked like finger food, but the others were using knife and fork, so he did too, and chewing, he took a look around the kitchen and what he could see of the next room.

The house was lit not by the candles and lamps of Hogwarts, but by clear glass balls that reminded him of Christmas ornaments, bright white lights shining in their centers like tiny suns. One of the glass balls was on a lamp behind him, and he put his hand to it. It was as cool as the air around it.

Harry said, "They're like light bulbs."

"Light bulbs are like them," Andromeda said. "The pilalux, or simply lux, is older than the light bulb by some millennia."

Harry said, "Hogwarts uses lamps and candles," and took another bite of salad.

"There are benefits to the use of flame, not least, in a place so chill as Scotland, the production of heat. And candles don't cost so much to replace when students break them."

Harry wanted to ask what the other benefits were, but Andromeda was looking at him in a way that made him nervous.

Andromeda said, "Has no one taught you how to eat?"

Harry swallowed the mouthful of salad before saying, "I didn't think it was something that took teaching. Don't chew with your mouth open is all."

Andromeda said, "First, the salad goes not on your dinner plate but on your salad plate. That's the small plate."

Harry hurriedly scraped his salad onto the salad plate. Now that he looked, all the others had put their salad on their small plates. How had he missed that?

Andromeda said, "This is a casual meal, but notice that you still have three forks. A dinner fork, a salad fork, and a dessert fork." She pointed to each as she spoke. "You only get one guess at to what each is used for. Generally, if you are presented with dessert, and you have only a salad fork and a dinner fork, as is not uncommon in casual dining, you should use the salad fork for your dessert. Does that make sense?"

Harry wasn't sure it did, but he nodded.

Andromeda said, "Fix your posture. Keep your back straight. Initially, muscles in your back will protest, but as those muscles strengthen, it'll save you back problems long term. It will strengthen your core, improve your balance, and make you appear taller and more impressive."

Harry noticed that all three Tonkses were sitting straight. Except, even as he looked, Tonks slouched.

Andromeda said, "Nymphadora enjoys slouching. A form of rebellion, I believe, but as soon as she stops thinking about it, she reverts to proper posture. Also, your elbows. Keep them tucked in as you eat. When they stick out like chicken wings, they bump into other people and into food."

With a wave of her wand, she conjured four slim cardboard spars, about the size and shape of folded up newspapers. She gave him two, then put her own two under her armpits, held by friction between her ribs and the inside of her upper arm. She said, "This is a rough and clumsy way to do it, but as you eat, the cardboard should not fall. If it does, you're sticking your elbows out too far."

Tonks said, "Mum, lay off him. He just got here."

Andromeda said, "So we'd best start off right."

Harry said, "It's fine." He stuck the cardboard spars in his armpits. It ought to be almost worse than the Dursleys, but he wasn't bothered at all. She wasn't trying to embarrass him, and she'd put the cardboard spars under her arms too even though she didn't need them.

Andromeda said, "Proper dining habits may seem like a useless hassle to you, but once they become ingrained habit, they won't be a hassle at all, and you will, without any effort, and with hardly any consciousness of it, make a better impression upon people than you otherwise would."

Andromeda began telling him about knives and spoons. Harry wondered if he should take notes, and Ted said, "You've dumped more than enough on the poor boy for one day. "

"Very well. Harry, what do you like to do?"

"Er, Tonks brought me a wireless and I like to listen to the history stories."

Andromeda turned to Tonks. "You have him call you Tonks?"

"Everyone calls me Tonks."

Andromeda said, "Not family. Certainly not here. If you truly do object to your name so much, you could go by your middle name."

Tonks said, "I am not going by Gertrude."

Ted said, "It was my grandmother's name."

"And I'm sure she was a very nice woman, but I don't like the name."

Andromeda said, "Still, Harry can't call you Tonks. Ted will be confused."

Ted said mildly, "I think I'd manage. Still, it's not very cousinly for him to use your last name. What about Dora?"

Tonks said, "Fine. Harry, call me Dora when we're with my parents."

Harry nodded, uncomfortable. There wasn't any of the nastiness of when Vernon and Petunia argued, but he still felt like he was witnessing other people's private things.

He ate, listening as Ted, Andromeda and Tonks talked about Minister Fudge and whether he would adopt the ICW's new guidelines for dealing with muggle surveillance cameras, and the meal drew to a close.

There was a desert. A custard with honey and berries, all ingredients produced on the Tonks family land. It was very good, even better than the cake Tonks had brought, and Harry suspected Andromeda and Ted didn't know about the cake.

Andromeda said, "Harry James Potter, you have drunk of our wine, eaten of our bread, partaken of our salt. We count you a guest no longer, but a member of this house-hold. Welcome."

"Welcome," said Ted and Tonks a beat behind her, Tonks rolling her eyes as she did.

"Thank you. Er. I'm happy to be here."

#

#

The three of them took Harry to a room larger than the Dursleys' master bedroom. A vast, L shaped desk sat in one corner in front of a large window. On the desk were a microscope and an item that looked at first glance like a second, fatter microscope, but proved on inspection to be a large kaleidoscope with stand. A telescope stood next to another window, larger than his own student telescope. A pine bookcase, half-filled with books. A terrarium on one wall, nearly the size of his bed at the Dursleys. A small, cream colored sofa. A large bed. And quite a lot of empty space, the wall a neutral cream and green.

Harry said, "This is my room for the month?" He was trying not to show how overwhelmed he felt, but his voice was tight. It felt like a room from a mansion on the telly.

Ted said, "It's yours. Don't worry. Space is cheap, and add-ons too."

"So is this a normal room for a wizard?"

"Fairly."

That relaxed him. For a wizarding household, it was a normal guest room, like what Aunt Marge might stay in. Wizarding houses were just better than muggle houses, like how Hogwarts was probably a lot better than a muggle boarding school.

Tonks enlarged his trunk and put it against a wall next to a door. Tonks gestured to the door and Harry opened it, finding a walk-in closet nearly as large as his room at the Dursleys. It had two dressers.

Behind a second door, he found his own loo, with a separate room for the toilet, a long marble counter, a shower, and a washtub so large he thought he could about swim in it if he knew how to swim.

"It's all too much," said Harry.

Tonks said, "A lot better than your space with the Dursleys, for sure. I'll leave you to it if you're ready for bed."

Not sure what to say, he thanked them until Andromeda said 'Congratulations on your Birthday' and told him not to make a spectacle of himself, and they left him alone in the massive room.

He walked a few circuits of it, marveling at what an upgrade even the closet alone would've been compared to his cupboard. He took his toiletries from his trunk, stored in a plastic shopping bag, and he went into the loo.

He opened the cabinet next to the counter, and found soaps, shampoos, combs, a washcloth, a scrub brush, and, in a small wood case, a sleek piece of red cloth a bit like a very smooth, very small washcloth.

A dentscour. Harry had seen Neville use one instead of a toothbrush, and decided to try it in favor of his own battered toothbrush with bristles so bent and packed together they were practically fused.

The dentscour wiggled when he picked it up. He wet it under the faucet, and, even though Neville only ever used water, he smeared white toothpaste on it too.

He put the dentscour it in his mouth. It wriggled around like a live thing, clamped on his top teeth, and gyrated across the row, industriously scrubbing, producing a lot more froth than he'd expected for the amount of toothpaste he'd used.

It pretty weird, especially how it went after his tongue and gums, but at the end of it he felt very clean and his teeth were noticeably whiter even though they'd been decently white to start with.

He rinsed it, set it back, and filled the tub. He took a long bath, splashing about in the water, noticing that it was staying at the same hot temperature he'd set for it, hardly cooling at all. The hour of the morning was catching up with him and he felt as if he could fall asleep in the bath, but eventually, with his fingers pruney, he got out, dried himself with a fluffy towel, threw on boxers and a shirt, and collapsed into the bed.

:::

Andromeda Tonks. A pureblood traditionalist who married a muggle-born, a total boss, and a mother figure as overbearing as Mrs. Weasley, but in opposite fashion. She will be a significant character over the summers.

In canon, Harry stays at two wizarding houses. The Burrow, home to an exceptionally poor family, and Grimmauld Place, which is a grim old place. Andromeda and Ted are meant to be middle-class, perhaps upper middle-class, but not rich. Here we see a more typical wizarding home. Wizards ought to have a higher standard of living than even rich-world muggles and with more leisure time.

I thought the summer would be short, chapters wise, but I already have another 10k words of it written.

Monstrosity, by JLL, available for Amazon Kindle.

I have so many fics started on my hard drive. A Dumbledore goes back in time fic. A Dumbledore borrows Harry's invisibility cloak and becomes Master of Death fic. A Harrymort fic. So many different 'pre-Voldemort's return, Bellatrix realizes Harry has a piece of Voldemort in him' fics. I almost feel bad about posting any of them because I feel like I ought to finish one of my underway projects first.


	9. Chapter 9: The House of Tonks

**The House of Tonks**

Something hard and sharp was digging into his chest. Something hard and sharp was hitting his forehead. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to hurt.

Harry opened his eyes to an irate snowy owl standing on his chest and pecking at his forehead.

"Ow, Hedwig, stop that."

Hedwig pecked him again.

"I"m sorry for leaving without you, but you found me alright."

Hedwig barked.

"Alright already, just get off me."

Hedwig fluttered off him and Harry stepped out of bed and went to his trunk. He pulled out the owl stand and the bag of owl treats.

Hedwig barked again, so Harry tossed three owl treats in her direction and set up the stand while she ate them. She barked again, so Harry hand-fed her three more treats, at which point she she allowed him to stroke her, hopped on her stand, and promptly went to sleep.

Harry supposed she'd had a long night. He felt pretty tired himself, but he also felt awake, and in the morning light, the wood outside his window, past the garden and the grass, looked inviting, and he wanted to be up and exploring, investigating where he'd be living for a month.

He dressed and went into the hall, avoiding the closed doors, reasoning they might be bedrooms, but he found a library, a music room and a game room, which held a foosball table, among other things. He didn't think the house was quite a mansion, but it definitely had more rooms than the Dursleys' house, and the rooms were bigger too.

He went through the parlor to the kitchen and found Ted and Andromeda there, making tea.

"Up already?" said Ted, seeing Harry. "I thought you'd sleep until noon. Tea?"

"Yes, please."

"Cream or sugar?"

"A dollop of cream."

A grey cat entered the room, wound around Andromeda's leg, purring, then faced the door and meowed.

Andromeda said, "That's Alien. Nymphadora named her. She's half-kneazle." She pushed a cup of tea across the table to him, Harry a little puzzled by how quickly it had been made.

He took a sip, found the tea very good, and said, "Can I help with breakfast?"

"Come out with me," said Ted. He had his wand in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. He waved the wand at a chest on the wall.

The chest was light walnut and on the large side. It was mounted on a rack about at eye level, and it had no front, its racks, levels and crannies there to be touched.

The chest grew legs, or perhaps showed them, and it lifted itself up off the rack. It seemed to Harry that the chest _looked_ at Ted.

Alien, Ted and Harry went out the side door together, the chest walking behind them. Alien went into the garden, sniffing a plant Harry thought was sage, and a yellow dog ran up to them.

It came up to Harry's mid-thigh, and Harry could see it was friendly from the way its tail was wagging furiously, but he still felt nervous thanks to the way Aunt Marge had always liked setting Ripper on him.

"This is Yolk," said Ted. "He's a sweetie, but resistant to training."

Yolk stuck his head in Ted crotch, then bounded around Harry in a tight circle, bumping against him.

"Scared of dogs?" said Ted, watching Harry.

"No." Harry put out his hand and Yolk sniffed it. Harry scratched the dog behind the ears, it licked his hand, then ran away, shoulders lowered in an invitation to play.

They walked along on a path through the garden surrounding the house, and fruit began to fly. Passing by a tomato plant, three fat, ripe tomatoes broke off their stems and flew into the walking chest. A cucumber did the same, and four peaches from a peach tree, softening but still firm.

They reached a wooden hutch with steel mesh, and at a flick of Ted's wand, the door to it opened. Harry knelt and saw three large chickens.

Nine eggs flew out of the hutch, mostly brown. Yolk whined, and eight eggs landed gently in a part of the chest that looked very much like an egg carton. The ninth egg hovered in the air over Yolk, who whined again. The air around the egg shimmered slightly, and the egg lowered over a dark grey stone marking the path, one with a concave top, like a plate, Yolk watching it, body aquiver.

The egg cracked, letting out half-cooked egg onto the dark grey stone. Yolk slurped it up.

Harry said, "Three chickens produce nine eggs in a single day?" He didn't know a lot about chickens, but he didn't think that was normal.

"Magic," said Ted.

Talking with Ted as they picked their way through the garden, Harry found a lot else was magic. The tomato plants produced a few tomatoes a day, year-round, and potatoes at their roots. The peach, apricot, apple, plum, orange, pecan and walnut trees were always in fruit. Cucumbers, zucchini, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, berries, corn, carrots and broccoli. The Tonks' garden was perhaps twice the size of the Dursleys' garden, but it produced loads of food.

Harry said, "It's enough food live off, isn't it?"

"We buy bread, dairy, sugar, wine, odds and ends and a lot of our meat. But yes."

Harry thought about if every family on Privet Drive produced most of its food in its garden. "It's quick, isn't it, with magic?"

"An hour or two most weeks."

Less time than Aunt Petunia spent on shopping. "So it's different. How muggles live and how wizards do."

Ted gave him a long look. "Smart boy. Yes, it's different. We brew most of our own medicines. With expansion and space-delving charms, land is dirt cheap and housing is cheaper. Apparition is near instantaneous and completely free, so there's no need for cars. We can even make our own clothing easily enough, though most don't. The independence creates a freedom most muggles only dream about. I'm muggle-born myself, and my life compared to my da's... It's different worlds, and you're lucky to be in this one."

Harry said, "So you don't work? At a job, I mean."

"I work for Nimbus. The broomstick maker. I used to lay charms, but these days I mainly tell the Charmlayers to show up on time and lay off the drama. I work a full and five. That's twenty-five hours a week. Andromeda works a full as a unicorn keeper. Doubles have gotten more common thanks to the war. People went into debt to purchase advanced wards, guards, and automatons and had to pay the goblins back. I hear poor Arthur Weasley works a triple. But it's settling back down. Fifteen hours is a 'minus five.' Ten hours is a half. Lots of young folk work halves. But it'll be years before you have to worry about this. Fancy crayfish with breakfast?"

"What's crayfish?"

Ted led him to the oval pond, which was oval, clear and sandy-bottomed, a stream running in and out of it, reeds along the edges and ducks on the surface. Fish flitted through the water. Some small, some so large that he worried about whether they had teeth.

Harry said, "What are the big ones?"

"Native carp. They grow quickly for us. _Accio Crayfish."_

What flew out of the water was not a fish at all. It looked to Harry like brown lobster about as big as Ted's hand. It went into a depression in the walking chest, clawing weakly.

"White-clawed crayfish," Ted explained. "Ours grow bigger than they normally do." He summoned seven more, sending them all into the chest.

Harry finished his tea as they meandered back to the kitchen, where he found Tonks, hair an irritated purple, dressed in sweats, sitting at the table and drinking tea. The chest came through the door behind them, set itself on the rack, and its legs stopped existing or went up into it — Harry couldn't tell.

Yolk came in, and Tonks scratched the dog up and down his body, sending him into convulsions of licking ecstasy.

Andromeda told Tonks to cook breakfast to 'work on her cooking spells.'

Harry watched carefully. Unlike with Ted in the garden, Tonks used incantations most of the time. The crayfish went into a pot, but the waffles were cooked perfectly with no use of a waffle maker, some of the eggs disappearing in the process.

Tonks served the waffles with butter and lightly caramelized peaches, eggs and shelled crayfish on the side.

"Crayfish with waffles," said Andromeda. "Not flavors I would pair together."

"I like it," said Tonks.

"You like anything. Ted dear, thank you for gathering."

Ted nodded. He had picked up a newspaper as he'd sat down for breakfast.

Harry felt odd about eating something he'd just seen alive, but his unease vanished when he took a bite of crayfish and found it good.

Over his newspaper, Ted said, "Any good on a broomstick, Harry? I have a few here you can fly if you like, but you have to stay within the wards."

Tonks said, "So good they tried to put him on the team as a first-year."

"Really?"

Harry said, "In my flying class, I, er, did well, and Professor McGonagall said it showed I would be a good Seeker, so she tried to put me on the team, but Dora said I shouldn't, so I didn't."

Ted raised an eyebrow. "That must've been interesting."

Harry admitted, "Some of the other boys gave me a hard time. The Weasley twins kept pranking me." He saw Dora's appalled look and said, "It was the right choice to not be on the team. The twins had to spend a ton of time on practice. If I'd had to do that, between my friends, studying, and spending time with you, I think I would've had to give up at least one and a half of them up, and they're all more important than Quidditch. And the twins weren't mean, really. Ron was more trouble, after every Gryffindor loss. I'm still a little angry at Professor McGonagall for trying to just put me on the team without explaining it or asking me about it."

Ted said, "So you're not interested in being on the team this year?"

"Maybe. Ton- Dora won't be there, so that's a lot of time I'll have to spend somehow. And I won't have to read the books for muggle-borns, which is good because Overview of Wizarding Britain and Overview of the Wizarding World were extremely dull. And then if I quit the gobstones club too and started Quidditch I might have just as much time for friends and studying as before."  
Andromeda said, "You like studying?"

"Sort of. I like doing wand magic. Theory of wand magic is mostly alright, and I like reading history. The hands-on portions of Astronomy and Herbology are okay, but I don't much like reading about it or doing the written work."

"And Potions?"

"I think it would be okay except for the fact that I really don't like Professor Snape. But I know I should study for it anyway, and Hermione makes me, so that's good."

Andromeda said, "Hermione's a friend of yours?"

"Yeah. She's bloody brilliant."

Tonks nodded.

Andromeda said, "Language, Harry. You may, if a handkerchief becomes soaked in blood, describe the handkerchief as 'bloody.' Otherwise, the phrase need not leave your mouth. Now continue, about this Hermione."

"Ah, yeah. We met on the train, but we didn't start talking really until gobstones club. She can be a little anno—she cares a lot about the rules and studying and she tries to answer every question in every class and she tells other people what to do, but she's helpful and smart and interesting to listen to and she's really good at Charms and Transfiguration, and everything, really."

"And your other friends?"

"There's two. Ron, he's a Weasley, he's my best mate, probably. He was a little annoying about the Quidditch team, but he's really funny and he explains about the wizarding world a lot, which is good since I'm muggle-raised. And Neville's really nice and really shy. He likes Herbology. He actually likes reading about it and memorizing the diagrams. I noticed a little before Christmas that he was going to classes by himself. I asked him to walk with us a few times and suddenly we were a quartet instead of a trio, which is good, because that stopped Ron and Hermione arguing so much. He calms them down so I don't have to play peacemaker so much."

"They don't get along?

Harry said, "They didn't at first. Ron said some not nice things about her, usually when she wasn't there. Hermione worries that Ron still doesn't like her at all and only talks to her because she I are friends, and because she helps him with his homework."

"Is that true?" said Andromeda.

Harry hesitated. "Based on what Ron says, it's not completely true. It was getting better all year until she drove him batty near the end bothering him about studying for exams. She can't ever leave well enough alone. I was frustrated too sometimes. But I think at the end when he saw his marks he felt better about it."

"So he's using her for marks?"

"No. It's just that she kept nagging him into studying and it made him angry, but once he saw his marks it was harder to be upset. I felt the same."

"Sounds tiring," said Andromeda, "being in the middle of that."

Harry said, "Sometimes. Going through the obstacle course together made them get on better, so I wish we'd done that earlier in the year."

"So this Ron is a Weasley. One of Arthur and Molly's brood, if I recall. What's Neville's family?"

Dora rolled her eyes.

"Neville Longbottom. He lives with his gran."

Andromeda said, "The Longbottoms. That's a good family. Sadly reduced today, as so many families are. I knew his parents. And what's Hermione's full name?"

"Hermione Jean Granger."

"Related to the Dagworth-Grangers?"

"I don't know what that is. She's muggle-born. Her parents are dentists."

Andromeda smiled. "Two purebloods, a muggle-born, and yourself, a half-blood. Your group has all sorts. That's only to the good."

"I'm a half-blood?" said Harry.

Andromeda said, "I have a wonderful book for you to read. It's called _A_ _n Overview of Wizarding Britain_ and every child ought to read it."

"I've read it," said Harry. Skimmed it, more. That book had been _boring._ He'd read whole pages without absorbing a word, and he'd skipped the chapter on blood purity because the introduction to it had made him angry.

Andromeda said, "Then you ought to know, that, oddly enough, in Wizarding Britain, there's traditionally no distinction drawn between the child of a muggle and the child of a muggle-born. Historically, muggle-borns were regarded as a sort of strange or dangerous muggle, and while they might have been paternalistically adopted into wizarding society, they were always viewed as muggle-borns, first and foremost."

Andromeda smiled and gave her husband's shoulder a squeeze. "Ted here is muggle-born, which makes Nymphadora a half-blood, just like you. This makes more sense when we recall that Wizarding Britain is an insular place, even compared to other wizarding societies. Muggle-borns and muggles who married wizards or witches were seen as equally foreign. There is some truth to that, but the truly correct paradigm for muggle-borns is not as foreigners, but as immigrants, and you only have to look at our language to know immigration is one of our most hallowed traditions. Moreover, they begin their immigration at the age of 11, and if you ever find yourself wondering why Hogwarts is a boarding school and we don't all just send our kids off through the Floo every day, consider that in your answer."

Harry was just starting to work out what she meant by that when Tonks looked at the clock and said, "It's past time I was going to the studio."

Andromeda said, "Enjoy your organized muggle flailing."

Tonks said, "I thought we might sign Harry up for it."

"For what?" Harry said.

"Mixed martial arts. It's a good physical activity and there's no harm in knowing how to throw a punch."

Harry thought of a Bruce Lee movie he'd seen half of on the telly, and he thought of Dudley and not being allowed to use magic over the summer. He said, "Sounds great."

Tonks said, "I'll talk to them. Monday maybe." She frowned. "Will you be alright here without me?"

Andromeda said, "No, Nymphadora, I'm sure that without you here to guide us, we'll get Harry in trouble with the ministry, expose him to licentious material, and have him play with matches in a muggle bomb factory."

"I just meant-"

"I assure you, Nymphadora, when you return from your muggle flailing class, and from the dueling club you falsely believe I'm unaware you attend, Harry will be alive, largely unharmed, and, perhaps, happy. Now go before you're late."

"You know about-"

"Shoo."

"Alright, I'm going." She wrapped Harry in a quick hug and went out the door, leaving Harry alone with Andromeda and Ted.

They stared at Harry. Harry stared at them. They stared at Harry. Andromeda said, "Have you finished your summer homework?"

"Yeah."

"Good. What would you like to do?"

"I could do chores," Harry said.

"That's sweet of you, but no. There is nothing you can do that we can't do in a tenth the time or less. You will have lessons instead. How would you feel about wandless magic?"

"Er, isn't that really advanced?"

"I didn't say you'd be any good at it, but struggle is its own reward. And don't say 'er.' It makes you sound slow of mind. Do you sing?"

"Um, not well."

"Don't say 'um' either. It's the same as 'er,' only more American, and you do not need to compound sounding slow with sounding American. I'll teach you to sing. Every young man ought to be able to sing. Do you play an instrument?"

"No."

"We'll fix that too. You ought to at least be able to play your wand, though I cannot speak to how much progress you'll make in only a month. I should think an hour of wandless magic followed by a ten minute break, an hour of singing and a ten minute break, and an hour of wand music. Ted dear, after lunch could you take him into the wood and show him the boundary?"

Ted said, "We should also get him up on a broom. Harry, I have a Nimbus 2001 on hand that you might like to try."

Andromeda said, "Not for more than an hour. We have a great deal to accomplish if we're to correct the rumored deficiencies of his upbringing."

Ted said, "An hour is hardly time for a good fly."

"An hour and a half then. Boys and their brooms."

Ted said, "He should have free-time."

"Most of his day will be free-time. But Harry, you are not to fly on a broom unsupervised, and Duckpot doesn't count. Duckpot!"

A pop, and a house-elf appeared in the kitchen. It wore a toga striped in black and green and looked much better fed than Dobby and had no apparent bruises.

Andromeda said, "Harry, this is Duckpot. She'll keep an eye on you when you spend your free-time outside the house. She's the only house-elf here, so if you see another, tell us. Duckpot, this is Harry Potter."

Duckpot said, "Duckpot is honored to meet Harry Potter," and bowed low until her nose almost met the floor.

Not sure what to do, Harry bowed back in his chair, though not as low, and said, "I'm happy to meet you too, Duckpot."

Duckpot gasped. Andromeda said, "We do not bow to house-elves."

Ted hid a laugh behind his hand, but not well enough for Harry to miss it. Ted said, "Andi, you've always said there's no downside to courtesy. If he wants to bow to house-elves, let him bow to house-elves."

"It's not proper."

"No, but Duckpot seems pleased. You were detailing his free-time?"

"Yes. Harry, you can play in the wood, but Duckpot will accompany you. Let her know. And don't go past the boundary. It's for your own protection, so don't be foolish. There are age-appropriate books in your room. If you don't read on your own, we'll set aside a time." She eyed him critically. "We'll take you shopping as well. And we must do something about your glasses."

Harry said, "I'm sort of a metamorphmagus, so Tonks said I'd work with her so I won't need glasses anymore."

Andromeda said, "You may be a sort of metamorphmagus, but you're not sort of a metamorphmagus. You're either a metamorphmagus or you're not. Tell me again, but be precise in your language."

"Er,"

"What did I say about 'er'?"

"Not to say it. I'm a metamorphmagus, but I'm not talented at it compared to Tonks."

"Compared to Tonks? But Ted Tonks here isn't a metamorphmagus at all."

"I'm not talented at it compared to Dora," said Harry.

"Hardly anyone is," said Andromeda. "I'll trust her to manage your metamorphmagus lessons. I have no talent for it, myself. Now, if you're quite done with breakfast, go scour your teeth and find me in the spellroom"

"Where's the spellroom?"

"Find it," said Andromeda. "It will be the room I am in."

Harry blinked and excused himself. He'd imagined relaxing and having fun with Tonks. Learning wandless magic sounded cool at least. He returned to the room, to 'his room,' marveling briefly again at how big it was. He cast an eye at the bookshelves, used the loo, let the dentscour do its thing, the went to find the spellroom.

#

#

The spellroom proved to be a granite chamber with white padding on the floor. There were two small wood chairs around a small wood table with a long white candle on it, and Andromeda had instructed him to light the candle.

He'd turned parts of the candle blue. He'd made bangs and pops. He'd scratched the table. He'd gotten Andromeda's robes wet. He'd burned his fingers slightly. And he had, at one point, singed the candle's wick, blackening it, a thin wisp of smoke rising.

But after an hour, he had not lit the candle.

"Time's up," said Andromeda. "Good effort. Take your break and I'll see you in the music room in ten minutes."

"I know I can get it if I practice longer."

"If you wish to spend your free-time on the candle, you may. However, time is up."

Harry said, "We'll try it again tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow is Sunday, so no. There are no lessons on Sunday. We will resume Monday. Nine minutes."

Harry had gone at the wandless magic exercises with a grim determination and had enjoyed it a little, feeling a warmth that reminded him of when he cast with his wand, only disorganized and diffuse.

The singing, however...

They had started out with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and after a few times through failing at that, Andromeda had sat at the piano. She'd hit a C, and told him to sing a vowel to match it. They did that for all the notes, and at the end Andromeda told him that he 'wasn't tone deaf,' and 'would learn to sing eventually.'

He was bored and embarrassed and wished a few times that he was being left alone in his room at the Dursleys. But also... Aunt Petunia hadn't ever taught him anything except which plants were weeds and a little about how to cook, and that had been mean and self-serving. Andromeda thought he should be able to sing, so she was teaching him, and that made him feel nice.

And he did like the idea of being able to sing, actually.

Harry said, "Did you teach Ton-, Did you teach Dora like this?"

"Of course, over the summers, and before she was old enough for Hogwarts. We taught her to read, to write, to sing and dance and do maths. We're not like muggles, sending our children off to strangers for schooling. Until they're 11, of course. Now get a drink. It's only seven minutes until we start on playing music."

Wand music, Andromeda said, did not have the same euphonic, suprasensory qualities as produced by enchanted instruments, but it did have the advantage of range. It was played by casting a charm and moving a wand around. He could change the pitch and the timbre (Harry didn't get what timbre was even after Andromeda explained it more slowly) and basically make any sound he liked, if he had the skill.

Since he was underage, Harry used Tonks' old baton instead of his wand. He thought it was fun, swishing the baton through the air, making annoying screeching noises, but by the end of an hour, Andromeda had him hesitantly doing rough scales, just trying to hit the notes.

When they'd finished, Andromeda said, "Now won't you feel good the whole rest of the day knowing you've been productive?

"I guess," said Harry.

Andromeda gave him a look.

"Definitely," amended Harry.

They went back to the kitchen for a snack and a drink, finding Ted there spending his Saturday by reading a book.

Andromeda eyed Harry critically and said, "I ought to take you shopping, if what you're wearing is anything to judge by."

Harry said, "It's fine. I don't need-"

"Yes you do," said Andromeda.

Ted shut his book. "Nymphadora mentioned that. Why don't I take him? As a muggle-born, I'll be able to explain matters to him better. Harry, you about ready?"

"Er, five minutes."

"Er?" said Andromeda, arching a brow.

"I'll be ready in five minutes," said Harry, and he ran off to the loo.

Seven minutes later, as Ted was walking him to the apparition point at the edge of the wards, Ted said, "Between you and me, Harry, you don't want to go shopping with Andromeda. You'll get stylish clothing in matching colors, but it won't be worth it."

Hardly an hour later, they returned, Harry the proud owner of a new wardrobe, muggle and magical both. He did perhaps, have the three of the same robes and the six of the same T-shirt in different colors, but neither Ted nor Harry saw anything wrong with that.

Harry had insisted on paying Ted back, and Ted had accepted with an amused smile.

Ted showed him around the outside and instructed him not to leave the boundary, which was marked off by a posts connected by ropes. Harry cast a longing glance at the stream, but Ted said it was time for lunch.

They went in to find Duckpot starting on lunch, and Tonks arrived just a minute after they entered, sat at the table, and told Duckpot to make a serving for her too.

Andromeda said, "Nymphadora, home for lunch, and not taking a bite to eat in her room. What's the occasion?"

Tonks averted her gaze and gestured vaguely in Harry's direction.

"Trying to be a good host? I'm so pleased to discover you were playing attention after all."

Ted cleared his throat. "Nymphadora, how was martial arts?"

"I'm not falling over so much when I kick."

Andromeda said, "If you had not objected so much to continuing your dance lessons-"

She cut off when Ted cleared his throat again. "So, Harry. I haven't heard yet about school.

Andromeda said, "Yes, you mentioned your marks. I'd be happy to see them, if you'd show me."

Harry said, "Let me go get the envelope."

He left, and came back from his room with a folded parchment in an open envelope, oddly short of breath. The Dursleys had never looked at his marks.

Andromeda drew the parchment from the envelope, unfolded it, and raised an eyebrow. "Odd to see a solitary P among those O and Es. I'd know potions isn't your favorite even if you hadn't already told me."

Harry scowled. "I did better than a P on my exam. If I were a Slytherin I bet I would've gotten an E, and if I were any other Gryffindor I would've gotten an A. But I only ever get an A if it's perfect, and even then sometimes Snape will vanish my potion and give me a T for the day."

Andromeda said, "You should speak of him as Professor Snape. It's a mark of respect. Even if he is, as Nymphadora claims, a 'slimy git,' you must still respect him. After all, as important as it is to respect our allies, it's even more important to respect our enemies. You wouldn't want to adopt any mental habits that lead to your underestimating them, now would you?"

Harry nodded, though he thought privately he'd keep calling Snape Snape.

Duckpot set the cucumber sandwiches and soup on the table. Andromeda gave her house-elf the barest nod and said, "From the sounds of it, Professor Snape is your enemy. How could we deal with that? There is always the idea of defeating one's enemy. You could perhaps get him fired. But that is a risky tactic, prone to backfiring horribly. And I must warn you that whoever replaced him would likely be the new Head of Slytherin, someone approved of by influential ex-Death Eaters, and thus might well be even crueler to you than Severus Snape."

Harry said, "Can't Professor Dumbledore hire whoever he wants?"

A small, amused smile graced Andromeda's face. "No. Just as in the muggle world, what to teach and how to teach it is the result of political conflict, and not all sides agree that small things like facts and effective teaching ought to have a place in it. Note that politics is one subject that we have come to a political agreement to not teach. Even your history course, taught by a soporific ghost, hardly gets to the structure of the Ministry until NEWTS, and most students don't bother to take NEWT history."

Harry's face was a mixture of confusion and realization, and Andromeda waved the aside aside and returned to the matter at hand. "A second tact is to simply withstand Professor Snape's dislike, keeping in mind that the only marks that really matter are those on your OWLs and NEWTS, and he won't grade those, but that is six more long years of discomfort, and hating the class will surely hinder your ability to learn the subject."

Andromeda continued, "Finally, he could cease to be your enemy. He wouldn't have to become your ally. That would be best, but it would be enough, I imagine, for him to be neutral. Why is he your enemy? Is it simply that you're the Boy-Who-Lived and as the Head of Slytherin he's required to publicly dislike you?"

Harry and Ron and Hermione had spoken extensively of why Snape might hate Harry so much, and it had never occurred to any of them that that might be the reason. But when he thought of how Snape looked at him and spoke to him... "That might be part of it," he allowed. "But it certainly isn't most of it."

Andromeda said, "Severus and your parents were a few years behind us in school, but James was very close friends with my cousin, Sirius Black, so I saw it, and heard more about it even after I'd left. Professor Snape and your father were in the same year, and they hated each other. Your father was a bit of a bully, you see."

"What?!" said Harry.

"Oh, it's quite true. Your father had many admirable qualities, but he was far from perfect. To those he liked, James was kind, compassionate, considerate, loyal and trustworthy. But he could be quite cruel to those he didn't like. Not just thoughtless cruelty, but pre-meditated cruelty, and as I recall, Severus was his favorite target. Don't think Severus was helpless, because he wasn't, and don't think Severus didn't keep the feud going when it had hit a lull, because he did, but of the two, I'd say your father was more at fault. Oh, stop looking at me like that. Your father was a good man. He was growing out of it by the end of his school days, from what I heard, and while perhaps he didn't ever grow completely out of it — I recall Lily being upset about something he pulled on her sister's boyfriend at their wedding — he was certainly continuing to grow out of it. He died quite young, after all."

Harry hadn't been told a great deal about his father, but everything he had been told was good. And the memories he'd seen had been good too. Mostly Professor's McGonagall's memories of his father doing very well in class and joking with his friends, and Tonks' memories of seeing him at gatherings, with a scattering of others.

Andromeda said, "No one's perfect, Harry. I'm not. Nymphadora isn't. Albus Dumbledore isn't. Your mother, Lily, well to be quite honest, she was closer to perfect than most, but she had her faults. She was pushy, short-tempered, and had a sharp sense of humor that edged at times into mean. I'm sure she did and said things she was ashamed of. But she was also honest and passionate, hardworking and caring, and did and said things that anyone could be proud of. I don't own a pensieve, but I'll borrow one from a friend and show you. But we were speaking of Severus Snape and why he dislikes you."

Harry wasn't ready to move on from the topic of his parents. But he was simultaneously extremely anxious to do so, and Snape was an escape from that topic, but also a return to it.

Harry said, "You think he hates me because of my parents?"

Ted looked up from his book. "He liked your mother. They were friends. It was very odd to see a little Gryffindor and a little Slytherin spending time together. I understand they knew each other before Hogwarts. I guess they had a falling out later, but Andi and I had graduated by then."

His mother and Snape friends? His head was pounding.

Andromeda said, "It's possible that he started hating your mother after they fell out, but I think the simpler explanation is that he only hates your father, and you do look remarkably like him. But, once you're not wearing glasses, the resemblance will be a little less, and Professor Snape might hate you less."

Harry decided he would keep on wearing glasses, even if they were simply empty frames.

Andromeda said, "But it may be that his reasons have little to do with your parents and more to do with you. Tell me about the first time you ever met him. First impressions can matter a great deal."

So Harry dutifully recounted the first potions class, including the three questions Snape had asked. He remembered it precisely. It had been engraved on his mind. 'Potter, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood.'

Andromeda looked startled, then satisfied. "That answers the question of whether he hated your mother after their falling out. The answer is no. Ted, did you ever read that book on Flower Languages I gave you?"

Ted turned a page in his book. "I may have skimmed it, dear."

Andromeda said, "Powdered root of asphodel. Asphodel is a Lily often used at funerals. Its meaning is "My regrets follow you to the grave. Wormwood means absence, and symbolizes bitter sorrow. So, we can translate the first words Severus ever addressed to you as, 'Potter, I bitterly regret Lily's death.' Not a statement he could possibly expect you to understand, but as a Potions Master it would be like a second language to him. And of course that 'bitter regret' creates the Draught of 'Living Death,' as if he himself has not been really alive since her passing. How romantic."

Harry said, "Sounds thin."

"It's possible I'm not understanding exactly what he meant by it, but it can't have been pure coincidence. He simply couldn't say something like that without seeing the double meaning."

Harry found his head hurting again. His mum and Snape being friends, his dad being a bully, Snape apologizing about her death in a subtle, secret way... Harry ate his food mechanically and excused himself as soon as he could. According to what Andromeda had told him, his free-time had started and he wanted to check out that stream.

Tonks went out with him, and they walked together through the garden, across the grass and under the eaves of the wood, the burbling of the stream growing louder. Harry had the idea Duckpot was watching them, but he didn't see her.

Tonks said, "How was it? Your day so far."

Harry stepped on a large rock a foot inside the bank of the stream, the water turning white at the edges as it broke around the rock. "Ted took me shopping. Andromeda taught me wandless magic, singing, and wand music. It was interesting. She said something about a daily planner. Reminded me a little of Hermione that way. And I'm not supposed to say 'er' anymore. Or 'um.'"

Tonks said, "Sorry about that. She can be a bit overwhelming."

"No," said Harry. "I liked it. Sort of. You can tell she cares. Or, something."

"'Or something' is right," said Tonks. "We'll go shopping for your textbooks soon, and she'll sit you down in the parlor and watch you read them. It's bizarre. I asked, and no one else's parents do that. Well, Eucretia Boulder's do, but that hardly counts. I tell you what, I didn't bring you here to study. We're going to have some fun. Ever been to a concert?"

"No."

"Ever been to the sea?"

"No."

"Muggle theme park?"

"No."

"Yeah, not much need for that one. Brooms are better than roller coasters by a mile."

Harry said, "I went to the zoo once. When I talked to the snake."

"You've mentioned that. Maybe a zoo too. Zoos are fine. Ever seen a film at the cinema?"

"Twice," said Harry. Both times a lot like how he'd gotten into the zoo. Aunt Petunia had taken Dudley and hadn't had anywhere else to stash Harry.

"Art museum?"

"No."

"History museum?"

"No."

"Science museum?"

"Not any museums at all," said Harry.

Tonks said, "We've got a lot to do. I have dueling this afternoon and evening, but we'll hit the beach tomorrow."

Harry said, "I don't know how to swim."

"Then we'll hit the pond instead tomorrow and I'll teach you."

Harry said, "Could I come watch you duel?" That sounded a lot more interesting to Harry that any sort of museum, and certainly much, much more interesting than the dance lessons he suspected were in his future when Andromeda realized he didn't know how.

"Maybe. Probably not. It's not a place for kids. Definitely not today. But I promise, we'll spend more time together later. It's just that Saturdays are big for dueling. You like it here more than the Dursleys?"

"Oh, loads." Lessons beat chores by a mile, even singing lessons, and everyone was nicer.

"I've gotta run then, so, see you later alligator." She jogged over to the apparition point, the soft spot at the edge of the wards and vanished with a pop.

:::

I am neither a Snape hater nor a Snape lover.

To clarify, the flower language thing is not made up out of my head: it's made up out of the heads of a bunch of old dead people from Europe and the middle-east back when it was Europe too. I did not notice that Snape's question can be interpreted that way. I read about it and confirmed it. I'm mainly using Frederic Shoberl's "The Language of Flowers," certainly one of the most classic British works on floriography.

To read a flower dictionary is to read a list of the names of females in Harry Potter. Even Narcissa. (Daffodils are also called Narcissus.)

Mandrake means rarity, so the Mandrake Restorative Draught is "Rare Restorative Draught." Monkshood, by the way, is not in Shoberl's work, but traditionally means 'beware of danger,' though it can also mean 'chivalry.'

Anyone involved in education knows that national and state politics drive a lot of what happens, and I get the impression that a decent number of writers in the fandom are involved in education, so I don't get why that doesn't come up more often in explaining certain things about Hogwarts.


End file.
